File talk:Wikipedia basics - watchlists.ogv
- This is the script for the screencast. Line breaks indicate slide changes.
This screencast is about using watchlists to keep up with discussions and new edits to articles on Wikipedia.
Every account has
a watchlist, which is
a tool for keeping track of recent changes on Wikipedia pages you care about. Wikipedians typically check their watchlists on a daily basis, or even more frequently when rapid discussions are going on. The watchlist shows
which pages and discussion have been active, and
lists the edit summaries other editors left--providing a quick overview of what's going on.
For many editors, the watchlist is like the beating heart of Wikipedia. On my watchlist, you can see that someone has been editing
one of the articles I watch, and someone has
added to a discussion on the article talk page as well.
To add an article to your watchlist, click
the star tab next to the search box. (You can
remove an article from your watchlist by clicking it again.) Adding an article to your watchlist automatically adds
the corresponding talk page, and vice versa.
By default, only the most recent change to an article shows up in the watchlist, and it only tracks changes over the last three days. You can adjust your watchlist settings by going to
"My preferences" and
then the "watchlist" tab. For newcomers, it may be useful to change
the number of days displayed to the maximum of 7, and to enable several advanced options:
Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent, and
Add pages I edit to my watchlist.
Click "save" to turn on the new option. This will make it easier to keep track of the pages you're working on.
As you edit more pages and your watchlist grows, it may make sense to revisit some of those settings. Some key kinds of pages you may want to add to your watchlist include articles you've contributed to, the talk pages of people you've contacted--in case they respond on their own talk page rather than yours--and any project pages you're connected to, like WikiProjects.
To learn more about watchlists, go the page "Help:Watching pages".
Happy editing!