Watching pages is a capability provided by Wikipedia that lets users efficiently see if any changes have been made to articles the user cares about.
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This page in a nutshell: A watchlist becomes harder to navigate the longer it is. Only watch articles that need watching. |
Any registered user can easily watch any page, and as easily unwatch (remove a page from one's watchlist) when logged in. This is far easier than visiting each page in which you have interest and visually observing changes.
That is a good question. Why do you want to know if any changes have been made to any particular page?
The following are some possible reasons:
Watching the following types of pages is not recommended unless you have some other interest in the subject:
There are two settings for your watchlist: one in which only the most recent edit appears, and one in which all edits within the given timeframe appear. The advantage to only the most recent edit appearing is that the watchlist is smaller. The advantage to all edits being displayed is that you can see a significant edit that was not the most recent. If you choose the first of these two, it is possible for that a page could be vandalized, the vandal can make another seemingly acceptable, possibly minor edit, and the act of vandalism could go unnoticed to you.
Displaying all edits can be a drawback though if you are watching one or more pages that are edited many times on a single day regularly. This could be truly overwhelming for you to track, especially when you have multiple pages like this.
As an alternative to watching such pages on your watchlist, if you are interested in seeing how one changes, it may be useful to simply to visually observe it each time, and to check its edit history.
The human mind has limits. Some can read and comprehend more than others in any given period of time, but we all have limits. The more pages on your watchlist, and the busier these are, the longer it takes to read it.
Reading a long watchlist in full may be exhausting. You may instead quickly scan it over, ignoring all but the most significant changes. However, by ignoring the bulk of changes on your watchlist, you defeat the purpose. It may make you miss an edit which is meaningful to you.
If you find your watchlist has grown too large for you to manage, there are several things you can do:
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