MediaWiki Watchlist & Recent Changes — Monitoring, Patrol, and Email Notifications

In this tutorial, you will learn about MediaWiki Watchlist & Recent Changes. We cover key concepts, practical examples, and best practices to help you master this topic.

The watchlist and recent changes system in MediaWiki lets you monitor specific pages, patrol edits for quality control, receive email notifications, and customize how you track activity — essential tools used by Wikipedia editors to protect the encyclopedia from vandalism and track pages they care about.

What You'll Learn

• Adding and managing pages on your watchlist
• Using the watchlist to track changes
• Understanding the patrol system for edit review
• Configuring email and web notifications
• Using the Enhanced Recent Changes view
• Setting up notification preferences

Why It Matters

On a wiki, content changes constantly. Without monitoring tools, you will miss important updates. The watchlist is your personal notification system — you watch pages relevant to your work, and MediaWiki alerts you when they change. The patrol system lets trusted users mark edits as reviewed, so others know the content has been checked. Together, these tools turn wiki maintenance from a firehose of random changes into a manageable workflow.

Real-World Use

A DodaTech documentation team assigns each product to a different writer. Each writer watches their product's pages. When someone edits a page they watch, they get an email notification. The senior editor patrols all edits — marking them as "patrolled" after review. If an unregistered user edits a watched page, the writer knows immediately. The watchlist becomes a personalized dashboard for each team member.

Learning Path

flowchart LR
  A["17: Categories"] --> B["18: Special Pages"]
  B --> C["19: Watchlist & Recent Changes"]
  C:::current
  D["20: User Groups"]
  E["21: User Rights"]
  F["22: Email & Notifications"]

  C --> D --> E --> F

  classDef current fill#38bdf8,color#0f172a,stroke-width:2px

Step 1: Understand the Watchlist

The watchlist is a personal list of pages that a user monitors. Each user has their own watchlist. Changes to watched pages appear on Special:Watchlist, which is like a personalized version of Special:RecentChanges.

Adding Pages to Your Watchlist

Three ways to watch a page:

1. Click the star icon: Every page has a star icon (or "Watch" tab). Click it to add the page to your watchlist. The star turns blue, indicating the page is watched.

2. Check "Watch this page" when editing: The edit form has a "Watch this page" checkbox. Check it to add the page while making an edit.

3. From page history: On the history page, you can add individual revisions to your watchlist.

Unwatching Pages

Click the blue star again to remove a page from your watchlist. Or uncheck "Watch this page" when editing.

Step 2: Using Special:Watchlist

Special:Watchlist shows recent changes to all pages you are watching. It looks similar to Special:RecentChanges but only includes watched pages.

Watchlist Features

• Days to show: How far back to look (1, 3, 7, 30 days)
• Hide own edits: Exclude your own changes
• Hide minor edits: Show only significant edits
• Hide bot edits: Exclude automated edits
• Expand watchlist: Show all changes, not just the most recent per page
• Enhanced view: Group changes by page with expandable details

Enhanced Watchlist View

The enhanced view (enabled in user preferences) groups changes by page. Under each page title, you see a list of recent revisions. This is much easier to scan than the flat chronological view.

Step 3: Email Notifications

MediaWiki can email you when pages you watch change. Configure this in your user preferences.

Enabling Email Notifications

1. Go to Special:Preferences
2. Click the "User profile" tab
3. Enter a verified email address
4. Go to the "Notifications" tab
5. Check the email notification options:

☑ Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed
☑ Email me when a page or file I created is changed
☑ Email me when a page or file I edited is changed
☑ Send me emails for events I watch

Email Digest Options

You can receive emails:

• Immediately: Each change sends a separate email
• Daily digest: One email per day summarizing all changes
• Weekly digest: One email per week

Notification Emails Format

Each notification email includes:

• Page title and link
• Who made the change
• Edit summary
• Link to diff (what changed)
• Link to the page
• Link to your watchlist

Step 4: The Patrol System

The patrol system lets trusted users mark edits as reviewed. This is essential for wikis where content quality matters.

Enabling Patrol

In LocalSettings.php:

$wgUseRCPatrol = true;      // Enable patrol in RecentChanges
$wgUseNPPatrol = true;      // Enable patrol for new pages
$wgUseFilePatrol = true;    // Enable patrol for file uploads

Marking Edits as Patrolled

On Special:RecentChanges, unpatrolled edits have a red exclamation mark (!) or a "Mark as patrolled" link:

Example Page . . (+123 bytes) [unpatrolled] Username (talk | contribs)
                                       └── click to mark as patrolled

Clicking the link marks the edit as reviewed. The exclamation mark disappears.

Patrol Permissions

Configure who can patrol:

$wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['patrol'] = true;
$wgGroupPermissions['user']['patrol'] = false;    // Disable for regular users
$wgGroupPermissions['editor']['patrol'] = true;   // Enable for editor group

Only trusted users should have the patrol right. Patrolled edits are assumed to be reviewed and safe.

Autopatrol

Users in groups with the autopatrol right have their edits automatically marked as patrolled:

$wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['autopatrol'] = true;
$wgGroupPermissions['bot']['autopatrol'] = true;

This saves time for trusted users whose edits do not need review.

Step 5: Watchlist Expiry

You can set pages to stay on your watchlist for a limited time:

When adding a page to your watchlist from the edit form, choose:

Watch this page for:
  ☐ 1 day
  ☐ 3 days
  ☐ 1 week
  ☐ 1 month
  ☐ Forever

After the expiry period, the page is automatically removed from your watchlist. This is useful for temporary monitoring, such as during a content review or after an edit war.

Step 6: Managing Your Watchlist

Viewing All Watched Pages

Special:Watchlist/raw shows every page on your watchlist in a plain text list. You can edit this list directly:

DodaBrowser
DodaSync
Main Page
Template:Notice

Clearing the Watchlist

From Special:Watchlist/raw, delete all content and save to clear your entire watchlist. Use with caution — this cannot be undone.

Exporting and Importing Watchlists

Copy the raw watchlist content to transfer it to another account. The raw format is one page title per line.

Step 7: Notification Badges

Modern MediaWiki skins (Vector 2022) display notification badges:

• Bell icon: Cross-wiki notifications (mentions, thanks, talk page messages)
• Star icon: Watchlist changes count
• Alert icon: Important system messages

Clicking the bell shows a dropdown of recent notifications. Each notification links to the relevant page or diff.

Step 8: Best Practices

Watchlist Management Tips

• Watch pages you own: Add pages you created or maintain
• Watch templates you use: If a template changes, your pages using it change too
• Watch the Main Page: Know when the front page is edited
• Watch policy pages: Stay informed about rule changes
• Use expiry for one-time monitoring: Set 1-day watch for pages during active editing

Patrol Workflow

1. User edits a page
2. Edit appears on RecentChanges with a red exclamation mark
3. Patroller reviews the edit
4. Patroller clicks "Mark as patrolled" if the edit is acceptable
5. Edit turns grey — other patrollers know it is reviewed

What You Learned

• The watchlist tracks changes to specific pages
• Email notifications alert you to changes on watched pages
• The patrol system marks edits as reviewed or unpatrolled
• Autopatrol automatically marks trusted users' edits
• Watchlist expiry lets you monitor pages temporarily
• Notification badges provide at-a-glance alerts

In the next lesson, you'll learn about user groups and permissions.

Common Mistakes

Practice Questions

1. How can you add a page to your watchlist without editing it?
2. What is the difference between patrol and autopatrol permissions?
3. How would you set up email notifications to receive a daily digest of changes to your watched pages?
4. Challenge: Set up a complete monitoring system on your wiki. Enable patrol in LocalSettings.php. Create two user accounts: an "Editor" (with patrol rights) and a "Writer" (no patrol rights). Create 3 test pages. From the Writer account, edit all three pages. From the Editor account, use RecentChanges to see the unpatrolled edits, mark two as patrolled, and leave one unpatrolled. Verify the autopatrol flag on the Editor account. Configure email notifications on the Editor account and confirm a notification email is sent after a Writer edit. Finally, add all three pages to your watchlist with a 1-week expiry and verify they appear on Special:Watchlist.

FAQ

Mini Project

Goal: Build a complete monitoring workflow for a team wiki.

1. Configure your wiki for patrol (LocalSettings.php changes)
2. Create two test user accounts: Patroller and Contributor
3. Set Patroller to have the patrol and autopatrol rights
4. Log in as Contributor and create 5 new pages with a few edits each
5. Log in as Patroller and use RecentChanges to find and patrol all edits
6. Configure email notifications for the Patroller account
7. From the Contributor account, add all 5 pages to a watchlist with 1-month expiry
8. From the Contributor account, make a change to one page
9. Verify the Patroller received an email notification about the change
10. Document the workflow on a page called "Wiki Monitoring Guide"

What's Next

Monitoring keeps your wiki healthy. Now let's look at user groups — how to organize users into roles with different permissions.

Continue to Lesson 20: User Groups — learn about standard groups, custom groups, and assigning permissions.