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.

Page tabs with the watch tab highlighted in green.

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.

Page tabs with the unwatch tab highlighted in green.

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 shown highlighted in green in the figure below.

Watch this page check box highlighted in green.

Tip: You can also check the "Add pages you edit to your watchlist" check box on the watchlist tab of your user preferences. When checked, the checkbox on the edit page (see figure) will automatically be checked, so unless it is unchecked before saving, the page will be automatically watched upon saving.

Email notification

Email me when a page on my watchlist is changed check box highlighted in green.

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 but only works if you have supplied and authenticated an e-mail address. For more information adding an e-mail address to your profile see item 6 in the user profile tab of your preferences page.

My Contributions

The my contributions page is a special page that keeps track of which pages you have worked on. The link is located at the top of the page to the right of the user homepage link. 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.

Left-hand sidebar user contributions link highlighted in green.

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 as shown in the figure below.

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