Help:Tracking changes
The wiki software offers a collection of special pages and tools for keeping track of what edits people are making on the site. For example, you can look at:
- the revision history, i.e., all changes made to one page
- the contributions of one specific user
- newly created pages
- recent changes to all pages
- Special:Log/newusers new user accounts
- changes made by new users (helpful to locate possible minor spam edits)
- Recent changes minus new User Accounts (such as the many spambots): Recent Changes - filtered
Recent changes
Special:Recentchanges displays all edits, file uploads, page moves, deletions and other actions made in the wiki. The menu at the top of the page offers a collection of links for customizing your display. You can limit the number of changes or the number of days shown, or you can restrict the page to edits made in a certain namespace. You can also hide edits marked as minor (don't forget that major changes can still be flagged by a user as minor).
Each entry in recent changes begins with several links:
- diff compares the current and previous revision of the page,
- hist links to the revision history of the page,
- the link with the full title of the page brings you to the current version. Pages on your watchlist will appear in bold.
Next is a flag describing the article modification type:
- N signals a new page,
- m a minor edit,
- b an edit made by a bot.
After this information, a timestamp is recorded, along with the difference in page size between the current and previous revision. The information of the user who made the edits is then listed, with a link to their user page, their talk page and their contributions, or to their talk page only in the case of anonymous users. Finally, if the user submitted an edit summary it will appear in parentheses.
Enhanced view
If you are logged in and have JavaScript enabled, you can also try the "enhanced" view. Simply go to your Preferences and enable "Enhanced recent changes (JavaScript)". In enhanced view, recent changes divides edits by page rather than listing them individually. Entries such as the following will appear:
- ! 15:17 Main Page (4 changes; (+236) Page history) [Some User (2×); Some Other User (2×)]
Simply click the blue arrow to the left of the page name and timestamp to expand that page's recent edits just as they were displayed in the normal style. This enhancement can be turned on and off at will, so feel free to try both to see which one you prefer.
Revision history
You can also see how an individual page has changed over time by going to the "History" tab on the page itself. (In the default skin, View history appears in the upper right hand side of the page.) The page history tab looks like the Recent Changes page, but contains changes only for that particular page.
You can use the history page to compare revisions to see how the page has changed or who made which change — check two radio buttons and click Compare selected revisions. You can also see how the page looked at a given point — click on a date stamp.
Watchlist
If you want to keep track of updates to certain pages, you can add them to your "watchlist" by clicking on the WATCH tab of each page you are interested in. In the default skin, Watch is in the dropdown next to View history; hover over the arrow to see the dropdown.
If you are already "watching" a page, you will see an UNWATCH tab instead that you can click on to stop watching the page. You can also "unwatch" multiple pages at once by editing your watchlist.
You will receive an email the first time your "watched" page is edited by someone else after you look at it, and you can see all changes to the pages you are watching if you go to your My Watchlist page.
See also
- pages recently created: Special:Newpages
- files recently uploaded: Special:NewFiles
- Related changes: Special:Recentchangeslinked/Pagename
- every edit made by a given user: Special:Contributions/User
- recent changes for all pages on your Watch list: Special:Watchlist
- a list of all special pages
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Tip for wiki admins: You may want to add important pages in your wiki to MediaWiki:Recentchangestext, the intro shown at Special:Recentchanges |