Help:Tracking changes

Important note: When you edit this page, you agree to release your contribution into the public domain. If you don't want this or can't do this because of license restrictions, please don't edit. This page is one of the Public Domain Help Pages, which can be freely copied into fresh wiki installations and/or distributed with MediaWiki software; see Help:Contents for an overview of all pages. See Project:PD help/Copying for instructions.

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

MediaWiki 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

The most interesting special page is Special:Recentchanges. It displays all edits, file uploads, page moves, deletions and other actions done in the wiki. In the menu on top it offers a collection of links to customize your display: limit the number of changes shown, the number of days or restrict it to edits to 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).

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 "Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist"; 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.

See also

• Special:Newpages
• Related changes: Special:Recentchangeslinked/Pagename
• User contributions: Special:Contributions/User
• History
• Help:Watchlist

Tip for wiki admins: You may want to add important pages in your wiki to MediaWiki:Recentchangestext, the intro shown at Special:Recentchanges

Syntax

{{Languages|PageName}}

• PageName (optional) - the name of the page to display language links for. If omitted then the English version of the current page is used. This parameter can normally be omitted, as it is only required if you want to link to a page other than the one you place the template on, which is very uncommon. If this parameter is used on a sub-page make sure you supply the root name, not the full page name (e.g. on MediaWiki/fr you would need to use {{Languages|MediaWiki}} and not {{Languages|MediaWiki/fr}}).

Usage

The template should only be placed on pages that exist in more than one language, and it should be placed in the same location on each translation of the page.

The English version of a page is always the main version, with all other languages as sub-pages, named using the appropriate language code (see below).

For example, on the Main Page you would include the text {{Languages}}, both on Main Page itself, and on each of its language sub-pages. The template automatically creates links to any language sub-pages that exist, e.g. Main Page/ja<tt>, <tt>Main Page/fr, and ignores non-existant languages.

See Project:Language policy for further details about translating pages.

Supported languages

This shows you the name of each language's sub-page (using Main Page as an example). Other languages may be added easily as necessary. Please use the appropriate prefix, as used on Wikipedia when adding a new language. Please do not add languages for which no pages exist yet, as this will increase the time needed to include the template without adding any benefit (languages are only displayed to the user when the relevant page exists).

The link on the language names goes to the Wikipedia in that language. If no Wikipedia in your language exists, do not add pages in that language to MediaWiki.org! This wiki is not the place for language advocacy - please go through the correct channels, and once your language has a Wikipedia then please return to add content here.

Page Name	Language
Main Page	English

Example

Here is how the language bar looks on the MediaWiki page: