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 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.

Enhanced view
When logged in with JavaScript enabled, you can also try the "enhanced" view. Simply go to your Preferences and then click on the "" tab to enable ""; this will make recent changes show edits divided by page rather than being listed individually. You will now see entries like the following:

 15:17 Main Page (+236) [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 on the normal style.