IUT 2009 MediaWiki Workshop/Activities/Communication and Interaction/Useful features

My Watchlist
The Recent changes page provides wiki users with a broad overview of what is happening across the entire wiki. However, if there is a lot of activity going on in the wiki, it can be difficult to keep track of pages that you are interested in.

Users who are logged-in have the convenient ability to "watch" pages by clicking on the watch tab at the top of the page. This will add the page you are currently on to your watchlist. The watch link will change to unwatch for any page you have added to your watchlist. Clicking on unwatch will remove the page from your watchlist.

The my watchlist link that appears along the very top of the page after your login name acts like a personal Recent changes page for pages that are on your watchlist. It gives a list of all watched pages, ordered backward according to the time of the last edit of the page. Any future changes to a page on your watchlist or its associated Talk page will be listed in your my watchlist page. The page will also appear bolded in the list of recent changes to make it easier to pick out.

Each line on the my watchlist page shows details about the last edit: the day it was edited, whether it was a minor or major edit, the time, a link to the page, and the difference between the current version and the last one, the history, the user name and the edit summary.

If you are editing a page you can also add the page to your watchlist by clicking on the "Watch this page" checkbox.

Email notification
If you are logged into the wiki you will have the ability to modify some preferences on how the wiki works for you. One of the preferences available to you from your my preferences page is to notify you via email when a page you're watching is changed. This can be a very useful way to keep track of changes to pages or projects you are interested in.

My Contributions
The my contributions page is a special page that keeps track of which pages you have worked on. Checking your contributions is a useful way to refresh your memory about pages you have worked on (and to easily access them again). You can also use my contributions to find out whether there have been any subsequent edits. This makes it possible to "watch" pages even if you haven't put them on your watchlist.

Other people's User contribution pages can also be accessed and are useful for seeing how other users have contributed. To see another user's contributions, bring up the user's User page (User:username) and click on User contributions in the left hand toolbox.