Help:Tracking changes
Contents
What can be tracked
The CPAPtalk.com CPAP Wiki offers a collection of special pages and tools to keep track of what is going on in the wiki. So you can watch 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
- ... and more
Recent changes page
The most interesting special page is Special:Recentchanges. It displays all edits, file uploads, page moves, deletions and other actions done in the wiki. The menu on top offers a collection of links to customize the display; modify the number of changes shown, the number of days, or restrict it to edits within a certain namespace. You can also hide edits marked as minor (don't forget that major changes can be flagged by a user as minor anyway).
Explanation of page elements
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 brings you to the current version. If the title is in bold, it indicates that it is on your watchlist.
Next is a flag describing the article modification type:
- N denotes a new page,
- m a minor edit,
- b an edit made by a bot.
Following the timestamp, it shows the page size difference to the previous revision, then the user is mentioned, with a link to their user page and their talk page and contributions, or to their talk page only in the case of anonymous users.
Last but not least, there is an edit summary, appearing in italics, if the user submitted one when they made the edit.
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)"; 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 (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 on the normal style. You can turn this enhancement on and off at will, so feel free to try both to see which one you prefer.
More tracking tools
The Toolbox menu has some options to track some changes. It can be found just below the SEARCH box on the sidebar menu, located towards the left of any page.
Related changes
- Clicking on Related changes on any page will provide a history of changes to pages that are linked to from the page you are on.
Special pages
Special pages provides many options to track various things on the wiki. Here are just a few:
- Your watchlist can be extremely useful in tracking changes. Watchlist help
- Special:Contributions allows someone to view all of a specific user's contributions.
- Special:Log contains a whole host of options for viewing changes.
- Special:Newpages is useful for seeing what pages have been created recently.
Page history
Almost every page here has a history tab at the top of the page, that when clicked on, will display the entire edit history for that page. This is also very useful in tracking changes.