SubSurfWiki:Training/Tools

Wiki pages, users, and edits carry a huge amount of metadata. Because the content is stored in a relational database, we can make queries that shed light on when and how the wiki is being used. Fortunately, there are lots of predefined queries, such as page history, recent changes, and so on.

History
Every page has a full edit history at. We can revisit every previous version of the page. This is one of the features that makes a wiki such a powerful content management system.

There are some things we can do to make the history more useful to everyone:
 * Don't save the page every two minutes — this makes the history very hard to read or use. Use Preview instead.
 * Always provide a Summary when you save. Set a requirement in your Preferences.

Recent changes
Special:RecentChanges is one of the links in the sidebar (left). It shows a snapshot of the most recent changes up to your visit to the page. This is a very easy way to see what's going on in the wiki — who's active, what they're working on, etc.

There are some options to see more or less information. You can edit the URL for custom parameters, e.g. [ More Recent Changes]

If you use a news reader, or want to filter the feed, you can use the Atom or RSS feeds for a machine-readable stream: [ Atom feed]. You could go even further with the API, but that's for another day. As an example of what's possible, here's the Twitter feed for this wiki, powered by Yahoo Pipes.

User contributions
Every edit you have made is listed in your user contributions page. There is a link to this page in the sidebar when you visit your user page (or anyone else's). Or just go to Special:Contributions/.

Watchlist
You can watch a page to receive an email notification next time the page is edited. If you do not visit the page, you will not be notified next time.


 * To add any page to your watchlist, click the star in the upper toolbar.
 * To see your watchlist, click the Watchlist link at the very top of the page or visit Special:Watchlist. It is not possible to see who else is watching a page (except with an extension like WhoIsWatching).
 * At the top of your Watchlist page, you have the option of seeing changes, or the watchlist itself.
 * There are some settings for the Watchlist in your preferences.