Help:Tracking changes

Recent changes shows the latest changes to pages, file uploads, deletions and page moves

The MediaWiki software that runs the Gentoo wiki offers a collection of special pages and tools to keep track of changes to the wiki, to track for example:

• Recent changes to all pages

• The revision history: all changes made to one page

• The contributions of one specific user

• Newly created pages

• The current user's watchlist may be used to alert when specific pages of interest are changed

The most interesting special page is Recent changes . It displays all edits, file uploads, page moves, deletions, etc. committed to the wiki. The menu at the top of the page offers a collection of links to customize the displayed information:

• Limit the number of changes shown

• The number of days

• Restrict to edits to a certain namespace

• Hide edits marked as minor (do not forget that major changes can be flagged by a user as minor anyway)

One line in "Recent changes" consists of several links:

• "diff" displays the difference to the previous revision of the page

• "hist" links to the revision history of the page

• the link with the full title of the page links to the current version. If the title is in bold, it indicates that it is on the current user's Help:watchlist

Next is a flag describing the page modification type:

• "N" indicates a new page

• "m" a minor edit

• "b" an edit made by a bot

Following the timestamp is the page size difference to the previous revision, then the name of the user making the modification as a link to their user page , next their talk page and finally a link to a list of all the user's contributions.

The edit summary, appearing in italics, if the user submitted one when they made the edit, is key to undersatnding at a glance what was changed in the edit.

See also

• Special:NewPages
• Related changes: Special:RecentChangesLinked/Pagename
• User contributions: Special:Contributions/User