Editing Help:Tracking changes

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, conveniently accessed from the sidebar menu. 
* Newly created pages
* The contributions of one specific user 
* The revision history: all changes made to one page

== Recent Changes==
[[Image:M-en-recentchanges.png|thumb|370px|'''Recent changes''' shows the latest changes to articles, file uploads, deletions and page moves]]

The '''[[Special:Recentchanges]]''' page is the most interesting special page is. It lists the most recent edits, file uploads, page moves, deletions and other actions done in the wiki.  Using this page, you can monitor and review the latest contributions, to discover and correct mistakes and to spot and revert vandalism.

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 recentchanges 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'' signalizes a new page,
*''m'' a minor edit,
*''b'' an edit made by a bot.

Following the timestamp the user is mentioned with a link to his user and talk page and to his contributions. In italic follows a comment if the user has submitted one. 

==Preferences==
Logged in users can set preferences to adjust the way that Recent Changes looks.  For help in doing this, see [[Help:Registration|how to log in]] and [[Help:Preferences|how to set preferences]].  The options that affect recent changes are:

* '''Hide minor edits in recent changes''' - this hides all edits that have been marked as minor by users;
* '''Enhanced Recent Changes''' - with this option enabled, multiple edits are grouped together. This option uses [[w:JavaScript|JavaScript]], and won't work in every browser (see [[meta:Browser issues with MediaWiki]]). See [[Help:Preferences]]
* '''Days to show in recent changes''' - You may select the number of days to be shown by default on the Recent Changes page.
* '''Number of recent changes''' - You may select the number of changes which will be shown by default. Once on that page, links are provided for other options. In the case of Enhanced Recent Changes this number of changes includes those that are initially hidden.

== See also ==
* [[Special:Newpages]]
* Related changes: [[Special:Recentchangeslinked/Pagename]]
* User contributions: [[Special:Contributions/User]]
* [[Special:Watchlist]]


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[[Category:Help|Tracking changes]]