Help talk:Watching pages

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).

Contents

[edit] Meta:Help:Watching pages authors and history

  • 09:01, 8 July 2006 Patrick (→Watchlist - Moving a watched page does not show up on the watchlist; after the move both the old and the new name are watched.)
  • 18:41, 26 June 2006 Altruic m (→Watching wikitext vs. watching the rendered page)
  • 00:46, 5 June 2006 71.133.223.216 (→Email notification - Added a citation to the Wikipedia Help Desk about email notifications being turned off on Wikipedia.)
  • 11:09, 19 May 2006 Patrick (→Deletion of pages)
  • 11:08, 19 May 2006 Patrick (→Deletion of pages - update)
  • 11:04, 19 May 2006 Patrick (→Recent changes - Related Changes)
  • 22:52, 17 May 2006 70.112.93.42
  • 11:44, 4 May 2006 Patrick (→Related changes feature - update)
  • 08:48, 25 April 2006 Patrick (→Watchlist - The enhanced watchlist is equal to the enhanced recent changes, restricted to watched pages, and without the bolding.)
  • 14:51, 24 April 2006Patrick m (→Watchlist)
  • 14:50, 24 April 2006 Patrick (→Watchlist - Enhanced watchlist)
  • 08:56, 22 April 2006 Omniplex m (subst H:new)
  • 01:10, 13 April 2006 Chealer (→Email notification - warn that those aren't available on wikipedia.org. probably not a clean way to do it (here). please help if you know better)
  • 09:20, 7 March 2006 202.140.95.102 (→Related changes feature)
  • 22:33, 14 February 2006 129.22.33.157 (→CSS - minor; capitalize "URL", change "although" to "even though")
  • 14:05, 30 January 2006 User:Patrick (fixed, clarified)
  • 05:16, 30 January 2006 User:Oleg Alexandrov (→Related changes feature - kill text without conclusion, does not help the way it stands, and I don't know how to fix it.)
  • 10:10, 28 January 2006 User:Patrick (→Related changes feature - rm dup)
  • 10:08, 28 January 2006 User:Patrick (merge two sections)
  • 10:01, 28 January 2006 User:Patrick (==Related changes feature==)
  • 09:52, 28 January 2006 User:Patrick (→Controlling which pages are watched - clarify that unchecked does not mean "do not change")
  • 09:45, 28 January 2006 User:Patrick (→Controlling which pages are watched - clarify)
  • 04:59, 28 January 2006 User:Oleg Alexandrov (rm note for now, it does not appear to have value. Rm more incomprihensible text.)
  • 02:59, 14 January 2006 User:Blahma m (→Using a set of pages with links as a set of separate watchlists - changed Pollution of categories since the original section does not exist any more)
  • 00:55, 14 January 2006 User:Chick Bowen (fixed ambiguous sentence in first par.; if I've misinterpreted and you revert, please at least deal with the comma splice)
  • 08:12, 27 November 2005 User:Uncle G (Fixed capitalization of template name.)
  • 03:37, 25 November 2005 User:Uncle G (Fixed capitalization of template name.)
  • 17:25, 17 November 2005 User:Uncle G (Fixed hyperlinks that break when this page is copied to other projects.)
  • 17:23, 17 November 2005 User:Uncle G (Fixed hyperlinks that break when this page is copied to other projects.)
  • 05:27, 16 November 2005 User:Uncle G (Replacement of {{new}} with {{H:new}})
  • 05:55, 3 November 2005 User:71.141.227.105 (→Watchlist)
  • 03:18, 28 September 2005 User:70.109.52.109 (1st line/"Anyone"-->"Anyone with an account")
  • 09:13, 24 September 2005 User:AlanBarrett m (→Css - capitalise "CSS" in heading)
  • 09:11, 24 September 2005 User:AlanBarrett (→Privacy of watchlsts - new section, prompted by a query at the en: village pump)
  • 20:19, 30 August 2005 User:Datrio m (Reverted edits by 220.161.107.106 to last version by Patrick)
  • 20:19, 30 August 2005 User:220.161.107.106
  • 20:22, 17 July 2005 User:Patrick (→See also - Detection of additions to a category)
  • 08:20, 16 May 2005 User:Patrick (==Watching wikitext vs. watching the rendered page==)
  • 08:17, 16 May 2005 User:Patrick (→Watching wikitext vs. watching the rendered page)
  • 08:12, 16 May 2005 User:Patrick
  • 05:35, 16 May 2005 User:Patrick (→Email notification -misc)
  • 21:04, 15 May 2005 User:Patrick (→Email notification)
  • 20:54, 15 May 2005 User:Patrick (→See also)
  • 20:48, 15 May 2005 User:Patrick (→Update marker - Note that to reset this (clear the notification flag) one has to be logged in when viewing the page.)
  • 20:42, 15 May 2005 User:Patrick m (→Email notification)
  • 11:29, 15 May 2005 User:Patrick (→Email notification)
  • 11:18, 15 May 2005 User:Patrick (Having a separate email for every edited page that one likes to watch in the sense of the other watch features, may be too much. New features are being proposed and developed: emails with a list of ed)
  • 10:43, 15 May 2005 User:Patrick
  • 09:44, 15 May 2005 User:Patrick (→Update marker)
  • 09:36, 15 May 2005 User:Patrick m (===Update marker===)
  • 09:35, 15 May 2005 User:Patrick (→Effects of watching a page)
  • 09:12, 15 May 2005 User:Patrick (→Effects of watching a page)
  • 09:02, 15 May 2005 User:Patrick (→Effects of watching a page)
  • 08:58, 15 May 2005 User:Patrick (→Effects of watching a page)
  • 08:54, 15 May 2005 User:Patrick m (→Controlling which pages are watched)
  • 08:53, 15 May 2005 User:Patrick (→Controlling which pages are watched)
  • 08:50, 15 May 2005 User:Patrick m (→Controlling which pages are watched)
  • 08:48, 15 May 2005 User:Patrick (→Controlling which pages are watched)
  • 08:41, 15 May 2005 User:Patrick
  • 08:34, 15 May 2005 User:Patrick (→Use)
  • 12:24, 21 April 2005 User:AnyFile
  • 11:43, 19 April 2005 User:Patrick m (→See also)
  • 18:10, 14 April 2005 User:67.166.125.169 (→Watching and unwatching)
  • 11:53, 31 March 2005 User:Patrick m
  • 11:49, 31 March 2005 User:Patrick (Unfortunately, the latter possibility does not have the feature of edited pages automatically being added to the watchlist.)
  • 11:42, 31 March 2005 User:Patrick (Even if Related Changes has equal difficulty in allowing a large watching a large set of pages, the difference is that when [[#Using a set of pages with links as a set of separate watchlists|using a s)
  • 11:37, 31 March 2005 User:Patrick (==Using a set of pages with links as a set of separate watchlists==)
  • 11:36, 31 March 2005 User:Patrick (==Using collections of pages with links as a set of separate watchlists==)
  • 11:09, 31 March 2005 User:Patrick (Note that the watchlist feature is not as reliable as Recent Changes and Related Changes: it gives more often "Database error" without any further explanation.)
  • 11:15, 24 March 2005 User:Patrick (Note that Related Changes does not detect an edit in the page itself and its talk page. Either include a self-link and a link to the talk page in the page, or put the page in another "special watchlis)
  • 11:08, 24 March 2005 User:Patrick (Watching pages in a category by applying Related Changes to the category has a major drawback: removal of a page from the category is not detected.)
  • 21:30, 19 March 2005 User:128.97.70.46 (replaced -- with &mdhash; link to HTML)
  • 22:20, 19 February 2005 User:Angela (rm "However, one can watch the Deletion log." - no longer true)
  • 01:16, 16 February 2005 User:Patrick (→Watching a category or an image)
  • 01:14, 16 February 2005 User:Patrick (→Watching a category or an image - The same applies for changing the image.)
  • 01:11, 16 February 2005 User:Patrick (Watching a category or an image means watching the editable part. Additions to, and removals from a category are not reported.)
  • 13:33, 28 January 2005 User:Patrick (In particular talk pages of template pages are vulnerable: content that is valuable enough for a non-talk page could be put here, if, by the nature of the template, it is not suitable for the template)
  • 13:16, 28 January 2005 User:Patrick (misc)
  • 13:10, 28 January 2005 User:Patrick (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.)
  • 13:05, 28 January 2005 User:Patrick (→Use -"page" more general than "article")
  • 12:58, 28 January 2005 User:Patrick (→Deletion of pages - However, talk pages are not listed separately, hence deletion of a talk page can not be detected in this manner.)
  • 12:29, 28 January 2005 User:Patrick (mv section down / Since the pages in the list are given in the form of links, deleted ones are easily identified, especially if you normally do not watch nonexisting pages.)
  • 12:24, 28 January 2005 User:Patrick (A list of watched pages, with the possibility of en masse unwatching pages by clicking checkboxes, can be done conveniently using {{SERVER}}{{localurl:Special:Watchlist|magic=yes}}, also available as)
  • 12:10, 28 January 2005 User:Patrick (→Deletion of pages - Since the pages in the list are given in the form of links, nonexisting pages (including the deleted ones) are shown in a different format.)
  • 12:04, 28 January 2005 User:Patrick (Also, {{SERVER}}{{localurl:Special:Watchlist|magic=yes}} shows all watched pages, including the deleted ones, with as usual by default a different format for nonexisting pages, including the deleted o)
  • 09:47, 26 January 2005 User:Patrick (→Article Hit Statisitics - There is a counter for page views of a given page, but on Wikimedia sites it has been disabled for performance reasons.)
  • 03:30, 26 January 2005 User:203.122.225.240 (Article Hits -- Save others looking in vain)
  • 12:42, 24 December 2004 User:192.169.41.37
  • 14:42, 15 December 2004 User:Patrick (with items in the form <nowiki>Main Page </nowiki> showing up as just Main Page .)
  • 14:35, 15 December 2004 User:Patrick (Note however that unlike My Watchlist, Related Changes does not automatically include talk pages; to watch also the corresponding talk pages, links to them also have to be in the page on which Related)
  • 03:07, 4 December 2004 User:Patrick (Such pages can use the template mechanism to include other pages. However, see Pollution of categories)
  • 03:45, 27 November 2004 User:Patrick (Oddly, this link for reducing the number of watched pages is not available when the watchlist function does not work because of too many watched pages. In that case use a URL like http://en.wikipedia.)
  • 06:46, 29 October 2004 User:Jean-Christophe Chazalette m (Reverted edits by 221.194.206.191 to last version by Patrick)
  • 05:34, 29 October 2004 User:221.194.206.191
  • 07:08, 26 September 2004 User:Patrick m
  • 06:08, 23 September 2004 User:AaronPeterson m ({{handbook sidebar|reader toc}} and a briefer main comment.)
  • 08:48, 14 September 2004 User:MattTM m (→Css - disambig CSS)
  • 02:39, 19 August 2004 User:Patrick (→See also - *Watchlist sizes for enwiki 2004-08-11)
  • 13:56, 16 August 2004 User:Patrick (==Keeping a number of separate watchlists==)
  • 23:13, 11 August 2004 User:Patrick (→Css)
  • 22:59, 11 August 2004 User:Patrick m (→Css)
  • 16:09, 11 August 2004 User:Patrick m (→Css)
  • 16:08, 11 August 2004 User:Patrick (→Css -Note that the full url is needed, even to highlight links from the same project, although the html code uses the relative url /wiki/''pagename''.)
  • 15:50, 11 August 2004 User:Patrick (→Css -To highlight links to the given page also from other websites, including interlanguage links, additionally use)
  • 15:26, 11 August 2004 User:Patrick (→Css - (also for piped links, but not for indirect links through a redirect).)
  • 14:39, 11 August 2004 User:Patrick (→Css - Furthermore, it also works on other pages.)
  • 14:32, 11 August 2004 User:Patrick (One can also define a help:user style for links to selected pages, putting in your w:css a list of lines like:)
  • 20:32, 28 July 2004 User:Patrick (Watchlist table)
  • 22:34, 22 June 2004 User:Raul654 (rv vandalism)
  • 22:14, 22 June 2004 User:69.69.20.216
  • 11:46, 2 June 2004 User:Patrick (→Watching and unwatching - You can also watch a non-existing page. Then you see it on your watchlist when somebody creates it. If a page has a (broken) link to it, press that link and press "Watch")
  • 01:09, 27 May 2004 User:Angela m (change next page link)
  • 21:03, 25 May 2004 User:193.29.77.111
  • 01:05, 15 April 2004 User:Jroes m (Added a link to the next page in the guide)
  • 17:36, 16 March 2004 User:195.11.216.59 (Added "no way to exclude minor edits in watchlist".)
  • 04:44, 9 February 2004 User:Angela (link to en:Wikipedia:Minor edit)
  • 21:44, 6 December 2003 User:Angela (en link)
  • 21:43, 6 December 2003 User:Angela (The default cutoff for the watchlist is currently three days for users with less than 1000 pages in their watchlists and 12 hours for Wikipediholics with more than 1000.)
  • 20:49, 13 November 2003 User:Daniel Mayer (updating from EnWikipedia version)
  • 02:13, 7 September 2003 User:Daniel Mayer (converted)
  • 02:06, 7 September 2003 User:Daniel Mayer (en.wikipedia version)

[edit] From Meta:Help talk:Watching pages

[edit] Watchlist

How can I move my watchlist from one account to another account? --Yacht 02:58, Nov 24, 2003 (UTC)

I don't think it is possible to do using the current software. You might view the list on the first account, open another window and login using the other account, open a new window for each entry and click Watch this page (from the new account). This should be easier with a tabbed browser. Another alternative is to save the links to one of your user pages, and then click Related changes from that page (or create a link [[Special:Recentchangeslinked/page_containing_links]] Dori 03:08, Nov 24, 2003 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Changing username, maybe that's what you need. I think maybe when you merge, the watchlists merge as well. I never merged, not sure. --Menchi 03:32, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Thanks. BTW, how long will the User contributions be kept? can I check out one's contribution 2 years ago? --Yacht 03:14, Nov 24, 2003 (UTC)

Forever I think, just set the maximum limit to 9999999 or something. --Menchi 03:32, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Where to set that? --Yacht 04:10, Nov 24, 2003 (UTC)
In http://en2.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=Dori&limit=20&offset=0 , change limit=20 to limit=999999 . --Menchi 06:14, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)
You really don't want to do that; some accounts have tens of thousands of edits. --Brion 06:20, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Maybe a "show edits from January 2001 to March 2001" feature could be handy. I don't think currently we could just zoom back to see contri-list 2 years ago without also getting the ones before that. Could we? --Menchi 06:23, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)
no need for 2 years, but the default setting of 1hours really upsets me, 'cause i have to click the 7days every time when i check out my watchlist. --Yacht 08:49, Nov 24, 2003 (UTC)
sorry, i missed the point, i thought you were talking about the watchlist... --Yacht 08:54, Nov 24, 2003 (UTC)

Can anyone tell me why sometimes my wikipedia watchlist says This is a saved version of your watchlist and doesn't update when refreshed? How can I make it refresh or how long do I have to wait for it to automatically refresh?? --Starx 00:51, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Answered at en:Wikipedia talk:Watchlist help. Angela 08:03, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Whenever I make a minor edit to a page on my Wikipedia watchlist, the page is taken off my watchlist. I just realized that this has been occuring for the last two months or so, but did not occur earlier. Is this some unintended result of a recent software change, or is there some preference that I need to change? — Joe Kress 01:30, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I found my problem. I was regarding "Watch this page" as an instruction to others that my edit was important and was worth viewing by others. Thus whenever I checked "This is a minor edit", I unchecked "Watch this page" because I regarded them as mutually exclusive. But "Watch this page" should be regarded as my instuction to Wikipedia to keep the page on my watchlist. Thus whenever I unchecked it I was actually removing it from my watchlist. — Joe Kress 04:16, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)


[edit] Erratic watchlist errors

My watchlist has been behaving erratically. The same bunch of items after a cutoff time sometimes appear, sometimes disappear. Totally erratic to me, no matter which link I repeatedly click and test, it doesn't seem to have a pattern I can figure out of.

Also, prior to noticing this erratic-watchlist behavior, I had a corrupted-article-save where half of the article got truncated and got saved without my explicit awareness. It should be either a network-timeout or me pressing the browser-stop button during saving. But this doesn't make sense, Wikipedia shouldn't have allowed saving corrupted article submission. There should be a transaction kinda model with rollback I suspect.

Is the article-corruption causing the watchlist anomoly? Any clue? thanks! --Godric 16:57, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)

I have erratic watchlist problem, but somewhat different. See http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=372 - Omegatron 15:04, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
How about this?
You have 161.5 pages on your watchlist (not including talk pages); you can display and edit the complete list.
following the "display and edit..." link tells me
Your watchlist contains 323 pages.
which is twice as many and then has a list of 323 links. Yes, I know that 323/2=161.5.
AndrewKepert 09:18, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 3 day cutoff

"The default cutoff for the watchlist is currently three days for users with less than 1000 pages in their watchlists and 12 hours for Wikipediholics with more than 1000."

Can this be changed somewhere? I want to keep the 3-day cutoff. - Omegatron 15:01, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Watching Categories

Is there any way to watch a category - that is, to receive a notification whenever a new page is added?

Not really, but see m:Help:Category#Detection_of_additions_to_a_category and the next section.--Patrick 20:20, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] RSS

Is it possible to get an RSS feed for my watchlist? That would be very helpful. Thanks, ted

There is currently no such thing in wikipedia. Similar ideas are being discussed here. RSS feeds of the watchlists might be very helpful indeed, e.g. for following up on violators and such, but at the same time, either computationally expensive or hard to implement. Anthony,-

This question has also been discussed on the bugzilla, here Anthony,-
(See m:Syndication feeds) ∴ here…en:♠ 19:00, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
I would love to see this feature. Eagleapex 21:40, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion

I have a suggestion to improve the watchlist; i would love to see an extra button next to diff & hist to be able to unwatch certain pages directly from the watchlist. It would be a handy tool to unwatch pages you've lost interest in without having to actually go there. But i have to admit, the RSS tool mentioned above is a MUCH better suggestion :-) --The Minister of War 4 october 2005

I believe it's also much harder to program. :P --Cawas209.201.53.238 15:55, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Bugzilla 424: Should be able to remove articles from regular watchlist view. ∴ here…en:♠ 19:00, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Working toward RSS feeds for watchlists (and everything else)

I'd like see this become a top priority for mediawiki development. Perhaps it already is and I'm simply working my way up the chain ;). As best I can tell, conversation is best gathered here on meta at m:Syndication_feeds. Please add your comments and wishes there, and lets make it happen. Here 22:45, 14 October 2005 (UTC) (revised ∴ here…en:♠ 19:00, 5 November 2005 (UTC))

[edit] Adding All Pages to your watchlist.

I'de like to know how one might add all pages to a users watchlist (not at the wikipedia of course). Some sites running mediawiki might have few enough pages that they could all be loaded into a watchlist. This would let users recieve email notifications if any pages were changed. I just hate to ask a new user to visit each page and add it to their watchlist. --D0li0 06:51, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

  • Any quick way to do this from the back end? --D0li0 06:51, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
  • How about checkboxed next to each page on the All_Pages page? --D0li0 06:51, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
  • How about a user preferance that any new page be added to their watchlist? --D0li0 06:51, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Wow, I would think a visit to the "Recent Changes" page, everyday, would make more sense. E-mail is not the only tool an employee is required to use, after all.

[edit] Shared and public watchlists

Revived m:Share watchlists conversation in hopes of allowing optionally public watchlists. The network could then be analysed and importing/exporting would be possible through something similar to OPML files. ∴ here…♠ 18:16, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Is anyone watching page X? And adding a page to someone else's list...

I am the Technical Reference librarian for a software company. While I read and review the Recent Changes page of our Wiki every day, I also assign Team Leaders to watch articles that relate to their speciality.

I wish there was some way to list "unwatched" pages, or to find out if a page was being watched or not, or to manually add the page to someone ELSE'S watchlist.

  • I am unaware of any way to list unwatched pages. Though the Enotif patch does allow users to see how many people are watching a given page bug 727, fixed.
  • It sounds like you would benefit from m:Share watchlists as well for reasons I had not considered. More and more I think a javascript hack that copies a users watchlist to a subpage (ex m:en:User:Here/watchlist) would be extremely useful, anyone want to write it?
  • Adding pages to others watchlists, again dunno. If software ever implements shared watchlists, the fully open option could allow a users watchlist to be publically viewed and editted. ∴ here…♠ 18:48, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Listing all unwatched pages

I though I heard someone mention [[Special:unwatched pages]] which I though would be a list of all pages with nobody watching them. This seemed like it could be a useful thing as it would allow people to pick a few pages from it to check for vandalism etc. --Salix alba 21:57, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question on this page

From MediaWiki 1.5 (if enabled; this has not been done on the linked test wiki) each page has a link to an info page showing, among other things, the number of users watching the page.

I find the above note, which is in the article, incomprihensible. I had to read it three or four times to see what it is about, and I am still not sure. So, is that feature enabled, or is it not? What is the "linked test wiki"? Does that text have any value, and should it necessarily be in a box, rather than a standalone paragraph? en:Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:48, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

That text was outdated, it referred to a link in an older version of H:new.--Patrick 09:40, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The current version of this page

I took a diff from the older version of this page and the current one (minus the recent edit I just did). Is it only me, or the old version looks much more comprihensible? en:Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:04, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Feature history

I'm trying to find out when (even nearest month/year) watchlists were added as a feature. And did it become available across all different language Wiki's at the same time?

No, apparently not. --Siva1979Talk to me 21:07, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Watchlist formatting change

The recent format of the watchlist is much less readable. Previously, with diff and hist ahead of the page name, I could quickly and easily see what pages had changes since my last check of my watchlist. Is there a way for me to get this back? --Kickstart70 16:33, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree. The current format makes it confusing which ones are top edits. I guess it's got its positives, but it would be better if, for example, top edits are labeled as such. --24.6.183.9 05:39, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] email notification

I'm new here. Many wiki flavors allow email notification of changes on a per-page basis. I'm guessing that mediawiki does not allow this, presumably because of the load it would generate. However, it would be helpful if the watchlist page explicitly stated that email notifications are not available, and why. If I'm wrong, and email notifications are possible, then it would help if it were much easier to discover that. --peter

The "See Email notification" link on the article page is broken.

Fixed the link, and it looks like there's an explicit statement now. I also wish there was selective email notification. Isn't there somewhere a more thorough discussion of this feature than me and peter here? Binba 00:59, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Watchlist archive tool.

Is there a way to archive a watchlist on en-wikipedia? I ask because I almost purged my watchlist by clicking on "remove all items" as opposed to "display and edit the complete list" (both links are adjacent to each other.) If it ever did happen, it would help to know how I could restore it. Folajimi 22:35, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

you could always just copy your watchlist to a user sub page -- and even make it deliberately public as at en:user:here/watchlist and m:Share watchlists. If you ever lost it, you would still have it. I also would like to automate this process, but for different reasons. best of luck! ∴ here…♠ 15:00, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
The link to clear the watchlist is very dangerous to have on the watchlist page. I hope one click does not wipe your watchlist. That link should take you to a page where you are warned before you actually erase your list (I haven't tried it). Having to do an extra click is a lot better than having people accidentally lose a list they don't want to lose. NoSeptember 14:18, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes, you are asked for confirmation.--Patrick 23:20, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Of course users are prompted for confirmation. 86.133.54.220 10:20, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] related changes

Why would anyone choose to use a watchlist instead of related changes? 69.177.58.73 02:38, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I think the main advantage is that pages one edits and their talk pages can be automatically added to the set of watched pages.--Patrick 11:49, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

A bit of a silly problem... I go to my Watchlist page and none of the links go directly to the page that the links relate to, only "user", etc. What is going wrong? Thanks in advance.Asteroceras 16:14, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Try the Help Desk If you haven't already. — Lenoxus 18:59, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] From this talk page

[edit] Watch message

‘The page "x" has been added to your watchlist. Future changes to this page and its associated Talk or article page will be listed there, and the page will appear bolded in the list of recent changes to make it easier to pick out.’

Don't you think it would be better to say ‘emboldened’ instead of ‘bolded’? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Max naylor (talk • contribs) 18:33, 11 May 2006 (UTC).

It would be better to say bolded. --Siva1979Talk to me 04:02, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Technically, it would be better to say "emboldened", however, the grammatically correct version could confused some users. You could try "in bold", instead. 86.133.54.220 10:19, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Phrasing

I find the phrase "one can not watch one and not watch the other" to be rather unclear. Assuming that I have interpreted it correctly, could I suggest that it be changed to "if you watch one, you have to watch the other" or something of that nature? Mrplastic 08:38, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, your way is much clearer than the current version. Nationalparks 01:38, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. --Siva1979Talk to me 18:35, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Expand Watchlist Option

What does the "Expand watchlist to show all applicable changes" setting do? Shouldn't info on this either be on Help:Preferences or Help:Watching pages? --Muéro 01:08, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

It makes the watchlist behave more like recent changes. The default setting (above option off) causes only changes to be shown when they correspond to the most recent version of a page. With the option switched on, however, all recent changes to your favourite pages are listed. 86.133.54.220 10:18, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Marking edits "read"?

I have a feature I'd like to suggest for the Watchlists on Wikpedia. It would be nice to be able to mark an edit as "read" so the page doesn't show up in my watchlist until there's another edit. I don't know if this is the relevant page to discuss it though. --Howdybob 09:12, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

This sounds like a good idea as the amount of clutter in the watchlist page would decrease significantly. --Siva1979Talk to me 02:50, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Protection

This is a copy of the master help page at Meta. 
Do not edit this copy. Edits will be lost in the next update from the master page.

Why do we even need this? If we do not want it edited, why don't we just protect it? It seems much easier to me.--Chili14(Talk|Contribs) 18:27, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

I have to agree with Chili14 here. --Siva1979Talk to me 18:58, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
At a guess, I'd say because the bot that overwrites it from meta probably doesn't have admin powers... -- nae'blis 03:20, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 30 day cutoff?

Trying to catch up after an extended wikibreak, I can't seem to view changes more than 30 days old in my watchlist. I know I have pages that were last edited before that - my timestamp page is one of them. Is this an undocumented feature? DenisMoskowitz 19:30, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

This is the same as for recent changes - watchlist items are taken from the same temporary cache of changes, and this is periodically automatically pruned, so these items will not be available past a set time. 86.133.54.220 10:17, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Multiple Watchlists

Is it possible to combine watchlists from multiple Wikipedias into a single page? I am currently monitoring articles on both the French and English Wikipedias, and it would be convienent for all edits to be reported in one place.

Michaelbusch 01:50, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Hello, I had the same request here:
I move it to here now, since it is the appropriate location.
@Michael: I would say: you should vote for the bug, at the moment, we have 3 votes for it. ----Erkan Yilmaz (evaluate me!, discussion) 14:47, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
start quote:
Hi, I am now participating on many wikis: Wikipedia (English, German), Wikiversity (English, German, beta), Wikibooks,... just to name some. My problem now is: I have to go to every wiki to log in with a different password (no, I won't use one single pwd for all :-) ). Isn't there a possibility to have one page only, where I can redirect all my watchlists (e.g. Special:watchlist) to? And then of course when clicking on it, I go to the different wikis. --Erkan Yilmaz 21:07, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Another possibility for this: I could also imagine, that I could get a daily digest for each wiki by mail --Erkan Yilmaz 06:54, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Well, they are already in request:
end quote

[edit] New feature?

As of today, when I check at my watchlist I see numbers (positiv and negativ) beside edits.What are they??? --Powo 20:54, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

It looks like the number tells you how many characters were added/deleted in a specific change. A negative number says how many characters were deleted, positive number says how many characters were added and a zero means the number of deleted characters and added characters are the same. That's my guess at least. Jtrost (T | C | #) 13:56, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Added or removed characters. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 16:53, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
Having just found this page in desperation at finding the reason for the seemingly random coloured characters that recently appeared in my watchlist and, having learnt what they do, I really fail to see the use of such a feature. For the vast majority of editors it's nothing more than page clutter. Surely something like this should be disabled by default on all accounts? If some character counting geek needs it then let them hack around with their css file! M100 22:29, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
You can get rid of it -- Arriva436 19:09, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Useless for deletes

Now this is something that really aggravates me: When some admin decides to delete an article or image without warning (something which should be much more controversial as it is), why does the watchlist not even tell me? Surely, that is a rather major change?

Has happened to me only two-three times in a long wikipedia service, but its extremely irritating nonetheless. MadMaxDog 09:04, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't like that either. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 16:59, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Help link on watchlist.

Could an admin please add a link to Help:Watching pages at the top of the watchlist. Something like this:

You have 167 pages on your watchlist (excluding talk pages); you can display and edit the complete list. See Help:Watching pages to learn how to use this page.

Thanks. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 16:58, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Custom watchlists?

Is it possible to make a special page with a list of articles that will behave like the watchlist does? For example, if I wanted to watch perhaps 200 pages related to a given topic, but not clutter up my primary watchlist to make it unreadable? How does everyone else do this? F.F.McGurk 21:48, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Im always finding the watchlist difficult to use. I personally think it should list watched articles, and then have ,last edited...date here, or something. Its rather hard to use i find. To answer your question, I have yet to find an answer, ive tried it myself, watch all article related to or on the list of gameboy advance games, but it didnt work..sorry.. Fethroesforia 01:00, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
WikiProject Iowa, has the following watchlist - Special:Recentchangeslinked/Wikipedia:WikiProject Iowa/Iowa recent changes - to go with Wikipedia:WikiProject Iowa/Iowa recent changes, which is just a list of the the links related to the WikiProject (I use AutoWikiBrowser to generate a list of articles with the project's banner on their talk pages).
It should be fairly easy to create similar pages as sub-pages of your user page or WikiProject if you want customized watchlists.
(Side note: the popups script is a really useful tool when working with watchlists b/c it lets you see the changes between versions w/o loading a separate page.)
If I wasn't clear enough, please leave me a note on my talk page and I'll be glad to help. --Tim4christ17 talk 19:53, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Limit of number of Pages?

Is there a limit to the number of pages you can have on your watchlist? -- Arriva 436 17:52, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Want to see your watchlist as an Atom (RSS) Feed?

Then you need hAtom - vote to add hAtom to MediaWiki's article history. Andy Mabbett 19:59, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Add all pages in a category to a watchlist

Is there any way to add every page in a categry to your watchlist? I've tried to search, but I can't find any mention of it? Basically what I want to do is watch every page that is part of WP:Stage - the WP I contribute to. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bryson430 (talk • contribs) 16:55, 9 March 2007 (UTC).

As far as I know, there isn't. Also, do you mean Category:theatre or what? \sim Lenoxus " * " 19:34, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, Category:Stagecraft, but the concept is the same. In the end, I've added it all by hand, but then, obviously, it doesn't update when new articles are added. Never mind! Bryson430 19:36, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
You can always check the "related changes" for a category, from the toolbox link. This doesn't tell you when articles are removed. You can also take the category and convert it to a list in a subpage of your user space, and check the "related changes" for that page. Gimmetrow 19:45, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Green text

Is it fine to make the "green text" thing a subtopic of the CSS section in this article? I just think it'd be easier, seeing as you can only change the green text in CSS which doesn't seem to be a very intuitive thing to do for newcomers like me. Maybe putting it in a different article and linking there might work better. What do you think? Kennard2 09:04, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bookmarking diffs

If you are watching a page, it's a very good idea to watch it properly - that is to check every single edit to ensure no vandalism, spam or disinformation slips through the cracks. Too often I see pages where some form of mischief has gone unnoticed for up to a year. To remedy this, we need to have people watching articles, ideally such that every single article is maintained by someone. However, when watching a number of articles, or those with high traffic, it's often easy to forget where you last checked. A bookmarking feature incorporated into the watchlist page could help make this easier - if you could mark the diff that you last checked, you could proceed from there next time and know that you have missed nothing. Thoughts? Richard001 21:12, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

You know, a feature like this seems to appear for certain sites using the same wiki software, like Uncyclopedia, where edits that you haven't seen are emboldened. Anyone know the reason for the diff? — \sim Lenoxus " * " 21:03, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
I can't say I have an account there, but it sounds like an excellent feature. That's basically the sort of thing I'm looking for, if we could use whatever code they did it should work here too, since it's all on the MediaWiki software. Richard001 06:22, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Doesn't display all edits...?

Hi all.

When I looked at my Watchlist earlier (my very short watchlist), I noticed that the only change of the article World of Warcraft was visible for the 23rd of march (today)... and this was a revert of vandalisation which happened earlier today. I then checked the article and saw that there was a lot more edits today, and many that weren't listed. Maybe I've missed a setting or something, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Could someone give me some help here? Many thanks in advance! Torte... of Doom! 19:47, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

The watchlist normally shows only the most recent edit on the page. If you want all changed during the last few days, change your preferences->watchlist and set the "expand" option. Gimmetrow 21:09, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Ahaa, many thanks! That'll help a lot :). Torte... of Doom! 21:21, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Every article I visit is automatically added to my Watchlist

I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place to ask this question, but if anyone could help me I'd greatly appreciate it. Recently, every Wikipedia article I view is automatically added to my Watchlist even though I don't click the watch button. I've looked over my preferences, but see no option to toggle this "feature" on and off. As I said, this only started happening recently, like in the past three weeks. Is there any way I can prevent this from happening? Jtrost (T | C | #) 23:37, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

There is a preference setting for this. Look under "Watchlist" on the My Preferences page. --orlady 22:29, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../w/a/t/Help_talk%7EWatching_pages_5536.html"