Help:Recent changes
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Recent changes is a way to see all of the changes that have occurred on a wiki. It is similar to the history button, but instead of listing just a single page history, it lists the history of all changes on the entire wiki. Whenever a change occurs, it is listed along with the user who made the change, the time, and a link to the edit. Recent changes can be found in your wikis sidebar or at Special:RecentChanges.
How do I interpret what I see on Recent changes?
Edit
This is an example of a recent changes list item:
(diff) (hist) . . N Page Name; 03:10 . . (+65) . . User Name (Talk | contribs ) (test edit)
Diff and hist linksEdit
(diff) takes you to the page diff view, which shows you what was changed from the last version in comparison with the newest version.
(hist) link takes you to the page history where you can compare old versions of the page.
N, m, b or no letter at all?Edit
These are listed before the page name. The letter N signifies that the page is a new page.
The letter m means that the editor marked the change as a minor edit.
The letter b signifies that the page was edited by a bot.
If there's no letter before the page name, that means it was a normal edit. It could have been something like adding a section, sourcing claims or such.
Page NameEdit
The page name is listed and links to the most recent version of the page (including images and files)
Time stampEdit
A time stamp follows the page name, and is in sync with the time zone you have chosen in your preferences.
Strange numbers, what do they mean?Edit
The positive/negative numbers after the page name and timestamp show how many characters were added to or removed from the old page, which gives you a quick idea how much the page has changed. This can be very helpful in spotting great new edits, or page-blanking vandalism.
What is that inside the parentheses?Edit
The italic comment inside the parentheses is the edit summary of an edit -- a small comment explaining how someone changed a page. For example, if you cleaned up a messy page, you could leave cleanup as the edit summary. Since edit summaries are made by choice, not all edits in recent changes have edit summaries.
What do the links at the top do?Edit
The first line identifies the current (default) settings.
The second line provides links to allow you to increase the size of the RC page, so that you can see more edits going further back in time. (Items do eventually drop off of Recent changes -- you can't go back forever.)
The third line allows you to hide or show edits marked "minor", "bot", "anon", "logged-in" or your own edits. Each of these is helpful to different kinds of editors, who use Recent changes for different tasks.
The final line shows the time that the RC page was loaded in your browser. By clicking on the date/time link in this line, you can reload Recent changes to show only edits that are newer than that time.
The drop-down box allows you to show only recent changes for a particular namespace, such as Image: or Template:.
The "Toggle enhanced recent changes" link turns off and on the JavaScript-enhanced RC page.
