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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Mrdice (talk | contribs) at 15:51, 22 December 2003 (red/blue distinction between links that exist and not is a matter of the preferences). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.


The Recent Changes page lets you see the most recent edits made to pages in Wikipedia. Using this page, users can monitor and review the work of other users, allowing mistakes to be corrected and vandalism to be eliminated. There is a link to the Recent Changes page at the top of the page and in the sidebar. You can also create a link to the page as [[Special:Recentchanges]].

For a general guide to the Recent Changes page see the Meta-Wikimedia version of this page

You can see the last 25 50 100 250 500 changes, or the number you specified in the preferences.

Understanding Recent Changes

(This section is about the classic Recent Changes, see also Wikipedia:Enhanced Recent Changes)

With the default preferences, the bulk of the page consists of fifty lines, one for each edit, looking like this:


This indicates three edits: the first by a user who is not logged in, to List of astronomers; the second by Theresa knott to Jelly; and the third by Michael Hardy to Papal States.

From left to right:

  • In a line showing the most recent edit to an article at the time of creating the Recent Changes list, the diff link shows the changes introduced by this edit, and also any edits that have taken place since the Recent Changes page was loaded. For other lines, it shows the changes in that edit only.
  • The hist link corresponds to the Page history link on the edited page: it shows not just this edit but also older and newer ones.
  • A bold M indicates that the user marked the edit "minor". Only logged in users can mark edits minor, to avoid abuse.
  • A bold N indicates that the article is "new", i.e., previously did not exist in the Wikipedia. It is possible for a change to possess both the "minor" and "new" indicators, this is typically used for new redirects.
  • The next link is a link to the current version of the page in question.
  • 10:06 refers to the time in UTC. You can change the time to your time zone using your preferences - see how to set preferences.
  • For logged in users, the next link is a link to their homepage, and will be in blue if the page exists, red if it does not. For users who are not logged in, the next link is a link to their User Contributions.
  • Finally, there is a link to the user's talk page. This will this will look different if the page doesn't exist, depending on your preferences.

Preferences

Logged in users can set preferences to adjust the way that Recent Changes looks. For help in doing this, see how to log in and 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 logged in users;
  • Enhanced Recent Changes - with this option enabled, multiple edits are grouped together. This option uses JavaScript, and won't work in every browser (see Wikipedia:Browser notes). See Wikipedia:Enhanced Recent Changes
  • Number of recent changes. You may select the number of changes which will be shown by default on the Recent Changes page. 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.

Viewing new changes starting from a particular time

If you have loaded the recent changes at, for example, 09:45 Feb 25, 2003, it gives a link "Show new changes starting from 09:45 Feb 25, 2003", giving you the changes you have not seen yet. In order to use this link later, after you have used the browser window for other things, or if you switch off the computer in between, you can instruct your browser to bookmark it (with IE: right-click on the link and choose "Add to favorites"). Alternatively, you can save the page with recent changes.

To get the new changes without one of these preparations, use (in this case, if the time above is UTC+1):

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Recentchanges&from=20030225084500

(format yyyymmddhhmmss, UTC time).

You can copy the above URL to the address bar and change date and time.

The "Number of titles in recent changes" set as preference is applicable.

Top of Recent Changes page

The content of Wikipedia:Recentchanges is what appears at the top of Special:Recentchanges. It can be edited when necessary. Wikipedia talk:Recentchanges is for discussing what might go on it.

Restriction on number of edits; alternatives

Possibly the largest number of edits can be obtained when you do not log in: 5000, currently covering ca. 17 hours (use "limit=5000", see WP:UR). Disadvantages are that watched pages are not bolded and that you can not use Enhanced Recent Changes. After obtaining the Recent Pages page you can log in, of course.

However, sometimes when not logged in and also when you are logged in the limit is lower, but it is not clear how much it is. If a request would involve more, no edits are given, nor any error message: the response is a blank page (not to be confused with no response; the response is a HTML page with nothing in the body part); alternatively after 30 minutes the system still says it is busy, but nothing is shown.

Checking changes for a longer period is restricted to watched pages (use "My watchlist" in combination with "Revision history"), pages that are linked from a given page (use "Related changes" in combination with "Revision history"), newly created pages (use "Newly created articles", then view the current version, or, if desired, also the revision history), individual pages (use "Revision history") and individual users (use "User contributions" in combination with "Revision history"). See also below.

Other MediaWiki features showing lines about edits

See Wikipedia:Edit_summary#Places_where_the_edit_summary_appears.

Lines about edits of pages that have later been renamed (moved) or deleted

After a page has been renamed (moved), earlier edits, including the original creation of the page, are shown in Recent Changes etc. under the new name. After a page has been deleted, earlier edits, including the original creation of the page, are not shown in Recent Changes etc.

This is caused by the fact that Recent Changes pages, etc., are created on demand, based on the pages that exist at the time of the request, and on the name they have at that time.

In this Recent Changes differs from a real log of editing events (the latter in the sense that something that has happened can not be changed afterwards). Compare Historical revisionism.

Show bots

Click here to view recent changes with bots:

Show last 50 | 100 | 250 | 500 | 1000 edits.

See also: Wikipedia:Bots

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