Help:Recent changes

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The Recent Changes page lets you see the most recent edits made to pages in OpenVistA Wiki. Using this page, users can monitor and review the work of other users, allowing mistakes to be corrected and vandalism to be eliminated. There is a link to the Recent Changes page at the top of the page and in the sidebar. You can also create a link to the page as [[Special:Recentchanges]].

For a general guide to the Recent Changes page see the enhanced recent changes.

Understanding Recent Changes

(This section is about the classic Recent Changes, which is the default. Logged-in users can use the enhanced Recent Changes).

With the default preferences, the bulk of the page consists of fifty lines, one for each edit, looking like this:

25 Dec 2005

  • (diff) (hist) . . M Setting up a OpenVistA System; 15:24 . . 12.34.56.78 (Talk)
  • (diff) (hist) . . Programming In MUMPS; 15:20 . . JoeBloe (Talk)

31 Oct 2005

  • (diff) (hist) . . N Explanation about VistA; 15:11 . . 12.34.56.78 (Talk)

This indicates three edits: the first by a user who is not logged in, to Setting up a Linux Printer; the second by JoeBloe to Programming In MUMPS; and the third by someone else not logged in to Explanation about VistA.

From left to right:

  • In a line showing the most recent edit to an article at the time of creating the Recent Changes list, the diff link shows the changes introduced by this edit, and also any edits that have taken place since the Recent Changes page was loaded. For other lines, it shows the changes in that edit only.
  • The hist link corresponds to the Page history link on the edited page: it shows not just this edit but also older and newer ones.
  • A bold M indicates that the user marked the edit "minor". Only logged in users can mark edits minor, to avoid abuse.
  • A bold N indicates that the article is "new", i.e., previously did not exist in the OpenVistA Wiki. It is possible for a change to possess both the "minor" and "new" indicators, this is typically used for new redirects.
  • The next link is a link to the current version of the page in question.
  • 10:50 refers to the time in UTC. You can change the time to your time zone using your preferences - see how to set preferences.
  • For logged in users, the next link is a link to their homepage, and will be in blue if the page exists, red if it does not. For users who are not logged in, the next link is a link to their User Contributions.
  • Finally, there is a link to the user's talk page. This will look red if the page doesn't exist, blue if it does.

Preferences

Logged in users can set preferences to adjust the way that Recent Changes looks. For help in doing this, see how to log in and how to set preferences. The options that affect recent changes are:

  • Hide minor edits in recent changes - this hides all edits that have been marked as minor by logged in users;
  • Enhanced Recent Changes - this option groups multiple edits together. It uses JavaScript, and won't work in every browser (see browser notes). See enhanced recent changes
  • Number of recent changes - this lets you select the number of changes which will be shown by default on the Recent Changes page. Once on that page, links are provided for other options. In the case of Enhanced Recent Changes this number of changes includes those that are initially hidden.

Viewing new changes starting from a particular time

If you have loaded the recent changes at, for example, 09:45 Feb 25, 2003, it gives a link "Show new changes starting from 09:45 Feb 25, 2003", giving you the changes you have not seen yet. In order to use this link later, after you have used the browser window for other things, or if you switch off the computer in between, you can instruct your browser to bookmark it. Alternatively, you can save the page with recent changes.

To get the new changes without one of these preparations, use (in this case, if the time above is UTC+1):

http://openforum.worldvista.org/~forum/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&from=20031213084500

(format yyyymmddhhmmss, UTC time).

You can copy the above URL to the address bar and change date and time.

The "Number of titles in recent changes" set as preference is applicable.

Restriction on number of edits; alternatives

Possibly the largest number of edits can be obtained when you do not log in (up to 5000). Disadvantages are that watched pages are not bolded and that you can not use Enhanced Recent Changes. After obtaining the Recent Pages page you can log in, of course.

However, sometimes when not logged in and also when you are logged in the limit is lower, but it is not clear how much it is. If a request would involve more, no edits are given, nor any error message: the response is a blank page (not to be confused with no response; the response is a HTML page with nothing in the body part); alternatively after 30 minutes the system still says it is busy, but nothing is shown.

Checking changes for a longer period is restricted to watched pages (use "My watchlist" in combination with "Revision history"), pages that are linked from a given page (use "Related changes" in combination with "Revision history"), newly created pages (use "Newly created articles", then view the current version, or, if desired, also the revision history), individual pages (use "Revision history") and individual users (use "User contributions" in combination with "Revision history"). See also below.

Other features showing lines about edits

See Help:Edit summary#Places_where_the_edit_summary_appears.

Lines about edits of pages that have later been renamed (moved) or deleted

After a page has been renamed (moved), earlier edits, including the original creation of the page, are shown in Recent Changes etc. under the new name. After a page has been deleted, earlier edits, including the original creation of the page, are not shown in Recent Changes etc.

This is caused by the fact that Recent Changes pages, etc., are created on demand, based on the pages that exist at the time of the request, and on the name they have at that time.

In this Recent Changes differs from a real log of editing events (the latter in the sense that something that has happened can not be changed afterwards).

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