Help:Watching pages

From HSU Expertise Directory

It is strongly recommended that any faculty, staff, or administrator listed in the directory "watch" their listing for changes, as other users may make modifications to their page. The "change creators" of these changes will be logged, to facilitate accountability, and users who have added a page to their watchlist will be notified by email when the page changes.

Anyone staff, faculty, or administrator with access to edit pages on the HSU experts directory may choose to be notified when a certain page changes using the 'watch' feature and 'my watchlist'. MediaWiki software does not let people 'own' pages; however, the watchlist feature, along with the ability to revert changes, keeps interested users involved in particular pages without the drawbacks of giving someone absolute control over a page.

1 Controlling which pages are watched
2 Effects of watching a page

[edit] Controlling which pages are watched

When logged in, there is a link "watch" or "unwatch" at the margin of each non-dynamically-generated page. By clicking on that link, you add the current page and the corresponding talk page (or if it is a talk page, that page and the corresponding non-talk page) to the collection of pages you "watch", or remove them, respectively. (All additions to and deletions from the list of watched pages apply to the non-talk page / talk page combination: one can not watch one and not watch the other.)

When saving an edited page, the new watch status (do or do not watch) is determined by the "Watch this page" checkbox.

If one activates the user preference "Add pages you edit to your watchlist", the checkbox on the edit page will automatically be checked, so unless it is unchecked before saving, the page will be watched upon saving.

A list of watched pages, with the possibility of en masse unwatching pages by clicking checkboxes, can be done conveniently using http://experts.humboldt.edu/~experts/index.php?title=Special:Watchlist&magic=yes, also available as link at the top of the Watchlist.

[edit] Effects of watching a page

[edit] Watchlist

When the user is logged in, every page has a link to the user's watchlist, also accessible by the link Special:Watchlist. It approximately functions as a custom recent changes just for pages that you watch. It gives a list of all watched pages, ordered backward according to the time of the last edit of the page, optionally up to some cutoff time.

Each line shows details about the last edit (with the enhanced watchlist multiple edits): the day, whether minor or major, the time, a link to the page, the difference between the current version and the last one, the history, the user name and the edit summary. By default, each line also shows the change (+/-) in bytes since the last version (see below, What do the colored numbers mean?). There is currently no way to exclude minor changes from the watchlist.

Note that in the non-enhanced watchlist for every edited page only information about the last edit is shown. For example, if the last edit was minor there is no indication whether there have also been major changes recently. Since one is typically interested in all changes since one last checked, the history of the page needs to be checked.

Moving a watched page does not show up on the watchlist; after the move both the old and the new name are watched.

The watchlist is only one of the features with regard to watching pages; even without ever using it, specifying pages to watch is useful.

[edit] Recent and related changes

In Recent Changes, Enhanced Recent Changes, and Related Changes, watched pages are bolded.

[edit] E-mail notification

Depending on preference settings, you get an e-mail after a watched page has been edited by somebody else. This will not be repeated until you view the page. Note that you have to be logged in when viewing the page, otherwise you will not be notified of further changes.

Optionally this notification system can ignore minor changes.