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For the purposes of Wikipedia, awatchlist is two things: 1) a list of so-called "watched" pages and 2) a list of recent changes made to those pages.
For everylogged-in user, Wikipedia offers to maintain a list of pages you are interested in monitoring changes to, so-called "watched" pages. You can also generate a list of recent changes made to those pages (and their associated talk pages). In this way you can keep track of, and react to, what's happening to pages you have created or are otherwise interested in.
By default, pages are kept on a user's watchlist permanently, or until such time as they choose to manually "unwatch" them (remove them from your watchlist). Various options also exist for temporarily watching pages, from periods between one week and one year.
Watching a page means that the recent changes made to it will show up on your watchlist (Special:Watchlist), as well as changes to its associated talk page. Actions affecting watched pages (pagemoves, page creations and deletions, protection) also appear in the watchlist. For example, if you watch a page that does not yet have a talk page, you will see on your watchlist when someone creates that talk page. If you watch a User: page, you will be notified on your watchlist if that user is blocked or hasuser permissions added or removed.
If a page you have watched is moved to a new title, the new title will be automatically added to your watchlist. Even if the page is later moved back (and even if the page at the new title is deleted), the new title will remain in your watchlist along with the old one. If you notice mysterious nonexistent pages appearing on yourlist of watched pages, this is the most likely explanation.
When you viewRecent Changes,Enhanced Recent Changes orRelated Changes, entries relating to pages you are watching appear inbold text. This means that it may be beneficial to mark pages as "watched" even if you do not intend on viewing theSpecial:Watchlist page.
No other user, not evenadministrators, can tell what is in your watchlist, or who is watching any particular page.Publicly available database dumps do not include this information either. However,MediaWiki developers who have access to the servers that hold the Wikipedia database can obtain this information.
For any particular page, it is possible to discover how many users have it on their watchlist. Under the Tools menu, click onPage information. Scroll down about two-thirds of the way through the first ("Basic information") section. You may see two related lines, like this:
| Number of page watchers | 312 |
| Number of page watchers who visited in the last 30 days | 23 |
The first line gives the number of accounts in the database that presently include this page. The second tells you how many users not only put the page on their watchlists, but also visited that page at least once during the last 30 days. Particularly for older pages, the first number does not give an accurate understanding of how many editors might review edits to the page, as most accounts are inactive.[1]
If the first number is less than 30, the exact number is displayed only to administrators. For all other users, the first will say "Fewer than 30 watchers", and the second line will be omitted. If displayed at all, the second line shows the exact number to all users, or says "There may or may not be a watching user visiting recent edits" if none of the editors with that particular page on their watchlists has visited that page during the last 30 days.
Watching a page allows you to receive email notification of changes to it. To enable this feature, select "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed" at the bottom of theUser Profile tab inSpecial:Preferences. (Currently, it is not possible to limit email notifications by page, so you will receive notification whenany page on your watchlist is changed.)
You can also monitor your watchlist viaRSS (RSS feed when logged in). You can also monitor your watchlist via RSS when logged out – seeWikipedia:Syndication § Watchlist feed with token.
There are four ways to control which pages you have on your watchlist:
between the 'View history' tab and the search box at the very top of the page, to respectively add or remove the page from your watchlist.[2] It will then become
filled. Note that the star symbol is available in the default website design ("skin"); in other skins, the tab says "watch" or "unwatch".
User Talk: page, the link iscanonicalized toUser: in the list.If you check "Add pages I edit to my watchlist" onthe "Watchlist" tab of your user preferences, then the "Watch this page" checkbox will always be checked by default when you edit pages. Other similar options are "Add pages I create to my watchlist", "Add pages I move to my watchlist", and (foradministrators) "Add pages I delete to my watchlist".
Twinkle has the option to automatically add articles it's used on to your watchlist (includingPROD nominations,XfD nominations andreverts). To change these settings, go toWikipedia:Twinkle/Preferences.
It should also be noted that:
A new watchlist feature (Watchlist Expiry) was introduced in 2020. It enables users to optionally select to watch a page only for a limited period of time. (1 week, 1, 3 or 6 months, or 1 year). This is done by clicking the hollow blue star icon and selecting the preferred time period in the dropdown, which then appears. Once the chosen watch period has expired, the page is automatically removed from your watchlist. You can alter the watch period at any time, including switching from temporary to permanent watching, or unwatching completely at any time. Temporarily watched pages are usually represented by a half-filled blue star icon (as opposed to a fully-filled blue star, which represents a permanently watched page).
If you simply want to permanently watch a page as usual, you do not need to change any of your current processes.
To remove all entries in the watchlist click onClear the watchlist. You will be prompted to confirm your selection. Once confirmed, all entries will be removed from your watchlist.There is no way to reverse this action. You may want to back up your watchlist locally by copying all of the lines from theraw watchlist to a file before clearing.
Legend (help):
DEdit made at Wikidata
rEdit flagged byORES
NNew page
mMinor edit
bBot edit
(±123)Page byte size changeThe legend shows at the top right of the watchlist
When you arelogged in to Wikipedia, a link,Watchlist, appears at the top of every page. This links to the special pageSpecial:Watchlist, reporting recent changes to your watched pages. It is a list separated by days, ordered backwards according to the time of the edit.
Each line of a Watchlist (or Recent Changes page) shows details of each edit: whetherminor (m), whether made by abot (b), if a new page was created (N), if the edit was at an associatedWikidata page (D), the time, a link to the page, a link to the difference ("diff") made by the edit in question, a link to the page history ("hist"), the editor's user name or IP address, the increase (green) or decrease (red) in the number ofbytes, e.g.(+76),(-490) and, if over 500, in bold:(+794),(-2,412), an arrow with a URL link to the specific section that was edited, and theedit summary.Wikipedia:Added or removed characters has more about the green and red numbers.
In August 2016 the English Wikipedia gotORES. When enabled, it displays a redr at edits that were flagged by the ORES system as potentially damaging. When disabled, the legend saysr but no edits are marked.
Technically, the watchlist is just a way to filterrecent changes to the wiki, and therefore has the same technical limitation of only showing changes made in the last 30 days.[4]
Pages that have been changed since you last visited them are shown with a green marker.
There are various options available to control how the list of changes is displayed:
It is possible to go beyond the standard options available inthe "Watchlist" tab of your user preferences (see§ Options section above). In particular, you can customize your watchlist usingCSS, by editingyour skin.css page. SeeWikipedia:Customizing watchlists for details.
It is possible to watch a page without watching its associatedtalk page; it is also possible to watch only a talk page. More information can be found atWikipedia:Hide Pages in Watchlist.
By default, an account can have only one watchlist. However, it is possible to set up watchlist-like functionality using the "Related changes" feature, in a way that effectively enables a user to achieve multiple watchlists. These are visible to anyone. To do this, create a page (normally in your ownuser space) containing links to the pages you wish to watch. Changes to those pages can then be monitored by going to the user page and clicking "Related changes". Note that in this case the talk pages corresponding to "watched" pages arenot automatically included, and that changes to the user page itself will not be picked up.
Related Changes can also be used to monitor changes to pages belonging to acategory, including the addition of pages to the category. However, the removal of pages from the category isnot detected.
Custom tools are available to change the behavior of the watchlist, includingUser:MusikAnimal/customWatchlists, which allows watchlist entries to be categorized.
The template{{delmon}} may be used to generate a watchlist-like page that indicates the status of pages with respect to the variousdeletion processes.
Watchlist notices are messages that are posted at the top of all users' watchlists, for example to publicize changes or discussions that are of importance for the whole editing community. Users are able to dismiss these messages when they have read them, orhide all notices. The messages are placed via the message pageMediaWiki:Watchlist-messages (editable byadministrators only).
If you are experiencing a technical issue with your watchlist, such as the watchlist not updating after an edit has been made to one of your watched articles, the issue can be reported onWikipedia:Village pump (technical).
