Help:Enhanced recent changes

The preferences can be set to use the Enhanced Recent Changes feature (not for all browsers) instead of the classical Recent Changes. It groups recent changes per day by article, displays the titles of the changed articles in order from new to old latest change, or in the case of hiding minor edits, latest major change (send ideas for improvement to Magnus Manske, the author of this feature).

Multiple edits on the same day to a single article are grouped together on the Recent Changes screen. All the edits except for the most recent one are hidden, but can be revealed by clicking on the blue arrow next to the article. This option uses JavaScript, and won't work in every browser (see Browser issues with MediaWiki).

Composition of lines
(For the pages Wikipedia:Upload log, the corresponding pages on Wiktionary and Wikibooks, and perhaps a few more pages some links are not present).

Pages for which there is only one edit
The line shows:
 * time (the date is not shown here, it is in a header)
 * linked page
 * the link cur to the last edit made (even in the case that an edit has been made after loading the Enhanced Recent Changes, in which case it is not the edit shown! See below.)
 * hist linking to the page history
 * user, linked to his or her user page
 * Talk, linking to the user talk page
 * edit summary

Pages for which there are multiple edits
The top line, which is the only one shown before clicking on the arrow, shows:
 * time
 * linked page
 * number of edits
 * the link changes to the cumulation of changes, including the edits made after loading the Enhanced Recent Changes
 * Link Page history
 * the users, linked to their user pages

The lines per edit show:
 * time, linked to the page version then created
 * the link cur to the cumulation of all changes after this one, including the edits made after loading the Enhanced Recent Changes
 * the link last to this edit
 * user, linked to his or her user page
 * Talk, linking to the user talk page
 * edit summary

Exceptions for the first edit line (about the last edit to the page at the time of loading the Enhanced Recent Changes)
 * the link cur is to the last edit made (even in the case that an edit has been made after loading the Enhanced Recent Changes, in which case it is not the edit shown! Use of this link is not recommended, use "last" instead. See also below.)
 * the link last is to the cumulation of this change and those made after loading the Enhanced Recent Changes.

Examples
The default recent changes looks like this:
 * (diff) (hist) . . MediaWiki User's Guide: Editing mathematical formulae; 10:06 . . 111.222.33.44 (Talk) (Add examples)
 * (diff) (hist) . . M MediaWiki User's Guide: Editing mathematical formulae; 10:04 . . Anthere (Talk) (links)
 * (diff) (hist) . . N MediaWiki User's Guide; 10:04 . . Brion VIBBER (Talk) (New page)
 * (diff) (hist) . . Endnotes moved to Footnotes; 10:03 . . Maveric149 (Talk)

Enhanced recent changes shows changes to one page on the same line, with an arrow next to it:

http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/Arr_r.png 10:06 MediaWiki User's Guide: Editing mathematical formulae (2 changes; Page history)  [ 111.222.33.44; Anthere ] N. 10:04 MediaWiki User's Guide (cur; hist). . Brion VIBBER (Talk) (New page)  .. 10:03 Endnotes moved to Footnotes (cur; hist). . Maveric149 (Talk)

Clicking this arrow expands the entry so you can see all the changes made:

http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/Arr_d.png 10:06 MediaWiki User's Guide: Editing mathematical formulae (2 changes; Page history)  [ 111.222.33.44; Anthere ] . . . . . . 10:06</tt> (cur; last). . 111.222.33.44 (Talk) (Add examples) <font color=#eee>. . .. . <tt>M</tt> <tt>10:04</tt> (cur; last). . Anthere (Talk) (links) <tt>N</tt> <font color=#eee> <tt>10:04</tt> MediaWiki User's Guide (cur; hist). . Brion VIBBER (Talk) (New page) <font color=#eee> .. <tt>10:03</tt> Endnotes moved to Footnotes (cur; hist). . Maveric149 (Talk)

Complication
A confusing bug is the following: a "cur" link, that at the time of loading the Enhanced Recent Changes page corresponds to the last edit to a page, works differently if one clicks on this link after a new edit was made: one sees the new edit, not the one to which the line on the Enhanced Recent Changes page corresponds (and neither the cumulation of both, as the other cur links do). Thus, when trying to keep track of all changes, one misses that.

In the case that there are several changes to the page listed, one will usually use the "changes" link, and otherwise one can use the "last" link next to the buggy "cur" link.

However, if only one change is listed there is no "last" link. In that case it is useful to note the time of the listed change, and after clicking on "cur" check whether the table of differences gives an earlier time on the left, as it should. If it gives the same or a later time, one is looking as a later change, missing one or more. In that case get the revision history to get the cumulation of changes from the one one has not seen yet.

Common installation error
In projects outside Wikimedia it may happen that during installation one forgets (or perhaps it is missing in the installation instructions?) to copy three little image files:

http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/Arr_r.png http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/Arr_r.png

http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/Arr_d.png http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/Arr_d.png

http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/Arr_.png http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/Arr_.png (blank)

to the corresponding directory. As a result the enhanced Recent Changes are more cumbersome to use.

Next page: Using the Related Changes function >