Help:Tracking changes



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 Special:RecentChanges. 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 "" consists of several links:


 * "" displays the difference to the previous revision of the page


 * "" 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:


 * "" indicates a new page


 * "" a minor edit


 * "" 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.