Help:Wiki University--Patrolling Recent Changes Page

Patrolling
One of our responsibilities as missionaries is to ensure that articles comply with Wiki policies. Changes to the Wiki go live as soon as they are saved. For this reason, patrolling recent changes and new pages on a daily basis is a standard part of the Wiki missionary assignment. (We missionaries are the Meerkats of the wiki and the first line of defense.)

All new pages and changes and additions to existing pages, no matter how trivial, are listed on a page named Recent Changes. All pages must be patrolled. (The only exception is pages that are edited by moderators [Wiki missionaries].)

When you are patrolling and find something that needs to be referred to another missionary for resolution, mark the change patrolled so that someone else doesn't work on it at the same time.

Setting Your Recent Changes Page Preferences
Selecting "Recent changes" under My preferences on the right side of your screen under "Personal tools" gives you options on how recent changes are displayed when you patrol. For example, you can specify how many changes you want to see at a time and how far back they should go. It is also recommended that you check


 * Hide patrolled edits in recent changes
 * Hide patrolled pages from new page list

Anatomy of the Recent Change Page
Here is a sample of three entries from the "Recent Changes" page.


 * ( diff | hist ) . . m ! Ship Brooklyn ; 15:45 . . (-57) . . KeslerJL ( Talk | contribs | block )

diff - means, as you would surmise, "difference." By clicking on "diff" it will take you to a page which shows what change or changes were made. Here is a sample diff page from our first entry above:

The next chapter will deal with problems you may see in this quick look that were not part of the last change.
 * What is on the left in yellow is what it was originally.
 * The green on the right is what change was made.
 * The actual changes are in red.
 * As you can see, the change was a minor correction to the text. However, some changes involve paragraphs and sometimes whole pages.
 * Below these yellow and green boxes is the whole article as it now appears. Scroll down the page and check out the rest of the page in case something undesirable has been missed in the past.
 * If the present change appears to be okay, then you click "Mark as patrolled" and go on to the next entry.
 * However, if you see problems with other parts of the page write down the title so you can fix it later after you have finished patrolling.


 * ( diff | hist ) . . m ! Ship Brooklyn ; 15:45 . . (-57) . . KeslerJL ( Talk | contribs | block )

hist - by clicking on "hist" you can see all edits and changes that have been made to this page since its creation.


 * ( diff | hist ) . . m ! Ship Brooklyn ; 15:45 . . (-57) . . KeslerJL ( Talk | contribs | block )

Kind of Edit - "M", "N" or blank.


 * M - stands for minor edit.
 * N - stands for new page.
 * blank means the edit was a major change. All edits are major unless you click the "minor edit" box. (Whether an edit is a major or minor change is a judgment call. Many times the user is unsure as to what it is. As a result, they may decide to do nothing, and therefore don't change anything.


 * ( diff | hist ) . . m ! Ship Brooklyn ; 15:45 . . (-57) . . KeslerJL ( Talk | contribs | block )

Checked or not - ! means the edit has NOT been checked or patrolled.


 * ( diff | hist ) . . m ! Ship Brooklyn ; 15:45 . . (-57) . . KeslerJL ( Talk | contribs | block )

Article title - "Ship Brooklyn" title of article that has been edited or changed.


 * ( diff | hist ) . . m ! Ship Brooklyn ; 15:45 . . (-57) . . KeslerJL ( Talk | contribs | block )

Time of edit - 15:45 in military time.


 * The time displayed will be according to the time zone you selected in your "Date and time" preferences. If you do not select a time zone, the time will be the time on the server.


 * ( diff | hist ) . . m ! Ship Brooklyn ; 15:45 . . (-57) . . KeslerJL ( Talk | contribs | block )

Size of edit - (-57) the number of bytes, either added or taken away from the article. Generally it means how many letters, numbers or spaces have been added or taken away. In our example 57 letters, which may be letters, numbers or spaces have been removed from the article.


 * ( diff | hist ) . . m ! Ship Brooklyn ; 15:45 . . (-57) . . KeslerJL ( Talk | contribs | block )

User name - name of user who made the edit. If the name is in blue, there is something on their user page. If in red, their user page is blank.


 * ( diff | hist ) . . m ! Ship Brooklyn ; 15:45 . . (-57) . . KeslerJL ( Talk | contribs | block )

Talk page - link to their talk page. Again if it is blue, someone has sent a message to them in the past. If it is red, no one has contacted them.


 * ( diff | hist ) . . m ! Ship Brooklyn ; 15:45 . . (-57) . . KeslerJL ( Talk | contribs | block )

contribs - this will take you to page with a list of contributions this person has made to the Wiki in the past.


 * ( diff | hist ) . . m ! Ship Brooklyn ; 15:45 . . (-57) . . KeslerJL ( Talk | contribs | block )

block - by clicking on block you prevent this user from adding more material to the Wiki in the future. You would ONLY take this step if you find them repeatedly violating Wiki guidelines. Unless their edits are very egregious, contact the user through their talk page to explain the issue. If they don't respond or refuse to fix the problem, then consult with mission leadership before blocking them. If, in the future, they indicate they are willing to follow Wiki policies and guidelines, they can be unblocked. '''Note: The block option will only show up if you have been individually given this authority. If you have not, you should post the information on Yammer for an administrator to make the determination and do the blocking.'''
 * Problems with the content will be:


 * Tagged by adding the appropriate Maintenance Template to the page
 * Resolved by working with the contributors to help them become successful in the wiki.

Summary - In the entry below our example you see (Citations for This Collection Database). These remarks were put in the Summary box, which you see below the edit box. In the summary box you should place the reason, or state very briefly what changes you have made to the article. However, if no entry was made there will be no summary comment as in our example.

Rollback - This is again in the entry following our example. Be very careful with this. By clicking on this link, you cancel all changes made by the most recent user back to the prior user. This is helpful for issues such as a blanked page or significant format corruption. Caution: cannot be undone. Just be sure you know what you are doing if you use the rollback link. Contact other team members if you have a question.

Undo - This appears at the end of the first entry in the example with green border under the explanation for hist. By clicking on this link, you reverse the most recent change. This action can be reversed.

Try these out
 Quick Quiz
 * The green box on the diff page shows the part of the page that was changed as it was originally.


 * True
 * False


 * The changes in the text are in blue.


 * True
 * False


 * When you see the N it means the user is new to the Wiki.


 * True
 * False


 * When the number in the parentheses has a minus sign in front of it, it means the article had a reduction of material.


 * True
 * False


 * You can learn about a user if the user name is in red.


 * True
 * False


 * If no reason for the change is displayed, the user failed to type in a reason in the Summary box.


 * True
 * False


 * If you want to see how many times the page has been changed, you click on diff.


 * True
 * False

Check your answers