Help:Watching pages

Watching pages allows any logged-in user to keep a list of "watched" pages and to generate a list of recent changes made to those pages (and their associated talk pages). In this way you can keep track of and react to what's happening to pages you have created or are otherwise interested in.

Effects of watchlisting a page
Watching a page means that the recent changes made to it will show up on your watchlist (Special:Watchlist). Its associated talk page goes onto your watchlist, and vice versa. Actions affecting watched pages (page moves, page creations and deletions, protection) also appear in the watchlist. For example, if you watch a page that does not yet have a talk page, you will see on your watchlist when someone creates that talk page.

If a page you have watched is moved to a new title, the new title will be automatically added to your watchlist. Even if the page is later moved back (and even if the page at the new title is deleted), the new title will remain in your watchlist along with the old one. If you notice mysterious nonexistent pages appearing on your list of watched pages, this is the most likely explanation.

When you view Recent Changes, Enhanced Recent Changes or Related Changes, entries relating to pages you are watching appear bolded. This means that it may be beneficial to mark pages as "watched" even if you do not intend viewing the Special:Watchlist page.

Privacy
Ordinary users or administrators cannot tell what is in your watchlist, or who is watching any particular page. Publicly available database dumps do not include this information either. Only developers who have access to the servers that hold the TechInfoDepot database could obtain this kind of information.

Email notification
Watching a page allows you to receive e-mail notification of changes to it. To enable this feature, select "E-mail me when a page on my watchlist is changed" at Special:Preferences. (Currently, it is not possible to limit email notifications by page - you will receive notification when any page on your watchlist is changed.)

RSS feed
You can also monitor your watchlist via RSS (RSS feed when logged in). You can also monitor your watchlist via RSS when logged out - see TechInfoDepot:Syndication.

Controlling which pages are watched
There are four ways to control which pages you have on your watchlist:
 * 1) Tab at top of page: When viewing a page, click the star symbol [[File:Vector skin - page not in the watchlist.png]] between the 'View history' tab and the search box at the very top of the page, to respectively add or remove the page from your watchlist. Note that the star symbol is available in the default website design ("skin"); in other skins, the tab says "watch" or "unwatch".
 * 2) *Watching pages that don't exist: You can watch a page even if neither the content page nor the talk page exists. To do that, go to the page's URL, either by typing the URL directly or following a (broken) link, and then press "Watch" (depending on the skin you may have to press Cancel first).
 * 3) Option at bottom of edit box: When editing a page, check or uncheck "Watch this page" before saving (above the 'Show preview' button).
 * 4) Edit entire watchlist: Click "View and edit watchlist" or "Edit raw watchlist" at the top of the watchlist page to view or alter the list of watched pages directly. The first option takes you to Special:Watchlist/edit, where the watched pages are listed with checkboxes which can be used to remove items. The second takes you to Special:Watchlist/raw, which has a text area with a list of watched pages, one title per line, sorted by namespace number and then alphabetically. You can edit the list directly, copy it to an external editor or replace it with a list created elsewhere. Duplicates are automatically removed on saving. In the list, redlinked (non-existent) pages are still watched, as are their talk pages, and this applies to subpages and their talk pages. When you click watch (star) on, for example, a  page, the link is canonicalized to   in the list.
 * 5) Popups gadget: If you have the popups gadget enabled, you can use it to watch or unwatch a linked page without having to view it.

If you check "Add pages I edit to my watchlist" on the "Watchlist" tab of your user preferences, then the "Watch this page" checkbox will always be checked by default when you edit pages. Other similar options are "Add pages I create to my watchlist", "Add pages I move to my watchlist", and (for administrators) "Add pages I delete to my watchlist".

It should also be noted that:
 * Because no one owns any article, there is no requirement to watch articles you have created or contributed to, so you are not expected to check to see whether your edits have been vandalised, challenged (e.g., for lack of sources), discussed on the article's talk page, and so forth. The only page you are expected to keep an eye on is your own talk page.
 * Talk pages are not listed at Special:Watchlist/edit or Special:Watchlist/raw, but they are automatically watched whenever their corresponding non-talk pages are watched.
 * Additional page titles may sometimes appear on your watchlist as a result of page moves.

Limitations

 * Special pages: It is not possible to watch automatically generated pages, such as Special pages.
 * Category membership: Watching a category page will pick up changes to the text of the category page itself, but not to the lists of subcategories and pages contained in the category (see also Help:Category). Similarly, watching an image will not detect uploads of new versions of the image.
 * Transcluded text: When a watched page contains transcluded text, such as templates, the form of the page may change as a result of changes to the transcluded pages. These changes will not show up on your watchlist unless you are watching the transcluded pages as well.

How to read a watchlist
When you are logged in to TechInfoDepot, a link, Watchlist, appears at the top of every page. This links to the special page Special:Watchlist, reporting recent changes to your watched pages. It is a list separated by days, ordered backwards according to the time of the edit.

Each line shows details of each edit: whether minor (m), whether made by a bot (b), if a new page was created (N), the time, a link to the page, a link to the difference ("diff") made by the edit in question, a link to the page history ("hist"), the editor's user name or IP address, the increase (green) or decrease (red) in the number of bytes, e.g. (+76), (-490) and, if over 500, in bold: (+794) , (-2,412) , and the edit summary. TechInfoDepot:Added or removed characters has more about the green and red numbers.

Technically, the watchlist is just a way to filter recent changes to the wiki, and therefore has the same technical limitation of only showing changes made in the last 30 days.

Options
There are various options available to control how the list of changes is displayed:


 * Show/hide different types of edit: You may choose to hide or show minor edits, bot edits, one's own edits, edits by anonymous users and edits by logged-in users (links for this purpose appear at the top of the watchlist page). Initially the default behavior for all of these is "show".
 * The defaults can be changed using the options available on the "Watchlist" tab of your user preferences.
 * Time period covered: You can choose how many hours or days you want the list of changes to go back, using the links at the top of the watchlist. For the maximum (30 days), select "all". For non-standard values, select one of the available links and then edit the value after "days=" in the URL.
 * The default value, which must be a number of days not greater than 7, is set on the "Watchlist" tab of your user preferences. Note that there may be a later cut-off due to the limit on the number of displayed changes, described below.
 * Restrict by namespace: You can restrict the list to changes in a specified namespace, using the "Namespace" drop-down box (check "Invert selection" to exclude the specified namespace).
 * Enhanced watchlist:
 * You can elect to display only the last edit to each watched page ("Simple watchlist"). This is currently the default, but can produce misleading results (for example, if the last edit to a page was minor, then there is no indication that a previous non-minor edit occurred). To ensure that all changes are displayed, check the "Expand watchlist..." option on the "Watchlist" tab of your user preferences.
 * Having selected the expanded watchlist, you can choose "enhanced" display mode, which groups together all changes made to each page on a given day. Click on the blue arrows to the left of the list to expand or collapse each group. This option applies to both the watchlist and recent changes, and for this reason appears on the "Recent changes" tab of user preferences, not the "Watchlist" tab.
 * You may choose to set the "Maximum number of changes to show in expanded watchlist" (on the "Watchlist" tab of user preferences). The maximum possible number of changes to display is currently 1000. If this causes a later time cutoff than you desired, you can see earlier changes by filtering by type or namespace, as described above.

Customizing watchlists
It is possible to go beyond the standard options available in the "Watchlist" tab of your user preferences (see section above). In particular, you can customize your watchlist using CSS, by editing your skin.css page. See TechInfoDepot:Customizing watchlists for details.

Hiding pages from a watchlist
It is possible to watch a page without watching its associated talk page; it is also possible to watch only a talk page. More information can be found at TechInfoDepot:Hide Pages in Watchlist.

Alternatives to watchlists
An account can have only one watchlist. However, it is possible to set up watchlist-like functionality using the "Related changes" feature, in a way that effectively enables a user to achieve multiple watchlists. To do this, create a page (normally in your own user space) containing links to the pages you wish to watch. Changes to those pages can then be monitored by going to the user page and clicking "Related changes". Note that in this case the talk pages corresponding to "watched" pages are not automatically included, and that changes to the user page itself will not be picked up.

Related Changes can also be used to monitor changes to pages belonging to a category, including the addition of pages to the category (which is not picked up by placing the category on a watchlist). However, the removal of pages from the category is not detected.

Size limitation
If you have a very large watchlist, bringing up the edit interface (Special:Watchlist/edit) can take a very long time. It may take so long that the server may terminate the query before any data has been returned to you, resulting in a completely blank page. How big your watchlist can be before you start having problems depends on the server load, so no exact threshold can be safely given. As of January 27, 2006, some highly unscientific testing has shown that watchlists bigger than ~9800 pages on the English TechInfoDepot will usually cause problems. This value may be used as a tentative upper limit. If you still have problems at that size, manually reduce the number of watched pages until it works reliably again, and prune your watchlist regularly to avoid running into the limitation again.

Watchlist notices
Watchlist notices are messages which are posted at the top of all users' watchlists, for example to publicize changes or discussions which are of importance for the whole editing community. Users are able to dismiss these messages when they have read them. The messages are placed via the message page MediaWiki:Watchlist-details (editable by administrators only).

Multi-project watchlists
A standard watchlist covers only one Wikimedia project (so your English TechInfoDepot watchlist can contain only pages on English TechInfoDepot). However, there is a multi-wiki watchlist available at http://tools.wikimedia.de/~luxo/gwatch/ that will allow you to simultaneously display changes to watched pages on as many Wikimedia projects as you want.

You can also watch multiple projects with RSS feeds of your different watchlists - see TechInfoDepot:Syndication.

Reporting technical issues
If you are experiencing a technical issue with your watchlist, such as the watchlist not updating after an edit has been made to one of your watched articles, the issue can be reported on TechInfoDepot:Village pump (technical).