You need to register a working email address in your profile. Only site admins can see that and may use it to contact you, as well as send password reminders. You cannot remove your email entirely, but by default it is hidden from everyone else and not shown on your profile page. Your email address will only show up to registered logged-in users if you set your preferences to show it, otherwise it doesn't show up on your user page at all.

However, being contactable by other users can sometimes be advantageous. Many members use a semi-disposable address for MetaFilter only so that people can contact them. The admins also have the email address you used when you signed up, and may use it to contact you for admin reasons. They will not give out this address, and it is not available to other users. You can use MeFiMail for contacting other users and being contacted if you don't want to have a user-facing email address.

You can edit your email address and the rest of your profile details by clicking on the preferences link at the top or bottom of the page when you are logged in.
(tags: email profile userpage mefimail mail ) March 6, 2006 - permalink - back to questions

If you contribute to other online communities, you can link to your profiles at some other sites from your MetaFilter profile page. (announced here) To add a link, click on "Preferences" at the top of any page, and scroll down to the bottom of the "Customize Metafilter" page. Under the heading "Social Apps", choose a service name from the drop-down menu and then enter your username at that site. If you want to add another link, click "add another service" and you'll get another menu/name combo. When you're finished, click "Save your Preferences" to save everything.

If you want to remove a link to a site you've added, go back to editing your profile. Clear your username for the link you want to remove and click "Save your Preferences". The link won't show up on your profile anymore.

It's not always easy to figure out your username at other services, so here's a quick guide to finding your username/id at some of the more challenging sites:

Flickr
Your Flickr photostream URL does not necessarily contain your Flickr username, and your Yahoo! login is not necessarily your Flickr username. To find your Flickr username, sign into Flickr and take a look at the line at the top of the page that says, "Signed in as...". Whatever appears there as a link is your official Flickr username. Make sure your Flickr profile isn't set to hide your profile from searches.

LinkedIn
Go look at your public profile page (you'll have to log in if you haven't already). Your profile page will show you your public profile URL and whatever is at the end is what you need to enter. It should look like this:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/[some name]

Grab [some name] and enter it as your LinkedIn Name in your MeFi profile.

SportsFilter
Log into SportsFilter and click on your profile page. You should see a URL like this:

http://www.sportsfilter.com/member/[some number]

Jot down the number, and enter it as your SportsFilter ID in your MeFi profile.

PoliticalFilter
Same drill as SportsFilter. Find your profile page and you should see a URL like this:

http://www.politicalfilter.com/content/member/[some number]/

Jot down the number, and enter it as your PoliticalFilter ID in your MeFi profile.

Facebook
There are two ways to link to your Facebook profile. First visit this page to see if you have a personalized URL set for your profile. If set, you should see a line that says, "You can now direct your friends to facebook.com/[username]." Copy the username into your MeFi profile.

If you don't have a custom URL set, log into Facebook and click on the "Profile" link at the top of the page. You should see a URL in your browser address bar like this:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=[some number]

Copy the number, and use that as your FaceBook ID in your MeFi profile.

Steam
Log into the Steam website, and click the "View my SteamID" link toward the top of the page. You should see a URL in your browser address bar like this:

http://steamcommunity.com/id/[some name]

Use the name as your Steam Name in your MeFi profile. If you see a URL like this instead:

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/[some long number]

Go into your Steam profile settings and set up a "Custom URL". Note what you enter for that custom URL value and use that as your Steam Name in your MeFi profile.

Shelfari
For Shelfari you need to find your internal user ID. Go to Shelfari and find your profile. The URL should look like this:

http://www.shelfari.com/o[some number]

Note the "o" at the beginning of your Shelfari user ID, you'll need that. Enter the whole thing including the "o" as your Shelfari ID in your MeFi profile.

Etsy
Etsy also requires a numeric user ID to link to their profile pages. The profile URL at Etsy looks like this:

http://www.etsy.com/profile.php?user_id=[some number]

Load up your profile and note the number in the URL. Then enter that number as your Etsy ID in your MeFi profile.

Gawker Media
Gawker profiles show all Gawker Media sites.

Adding a Flickr, Last.fm, or Twitter username to your profile will add a widget with your recent activity from those sites to your profile page. Keep in mind that it might take some time for MetaFilter to gather your latest information from the sites before the widget appears on your page. *
(tags: social profile users userpage ) August 8, 2007 - permalink - back to questions

This was a feature that some users had requested and it is totally optional. You can indicate your birthday [day/month/year or just year] and your age will appear on your prolfile to logged-in users. If you decide you no longer want to make your age/birthday visible you can revert to having no birthday showing.
(tags: age profile userpage birthday ) April 10, 2008 - permalink - back to questions