Help:Watchlist

Adding a page to your watchlist allows you to be notified when the page is edited. Your watchlist is a tool for tracking changes, similar to the “” display, but limited to showing changes only across your set of “watched” pages. Your watchlist is available only when you are logged in. You can see the watchlist display by clicking “” link in the Personal tools section of the Navigation bar on the right.

How to add a page to your watchlist
Before you see anything interesting here, you must add some pages to your watchlist. Do this by navigating to a page which interests you, and clicking the “” link in the Views section of the Navigation bar.

Difference between watchlist and Recent Changes page
The watchlist feature is especially useful when the “” display lists too many items. On a day when the wiki is receiving few edits, you would be able to see all of the editing activity across the whole wiki without feeling overwhelmed. On a busier day you will find that many edits are taking place on pages which you personally find less interesting. To help track changes which are more interesting, start watching pages!

Why watch a page?
Typically you would watch pages related to your interest areas, and also pages where your care most about the content. If you make a significant edit to a page, you might choose to watch the page to be notified of any follow-up edits by other contributors. Note that there is a “” tickbox provided on the editing screen for this purpose.

For example, if you are doing research in a specific county in England, you might click to "Watch" that page so that you can be notified when additional research guidance is added. Or, if you are a major contributor to that page, you may also want to "Watch" it so that you can be notified about who else is also working on the same page so you can work together.

The display: changes read vs. unread
On the watchlist display, some page names appear in bold. This indicates whether or not you have visited the page to see the change. This feature works like read/unread emails in an email inbox. The “” display will also have some new bold highlighting, but for a different reason. Here bold is just indicating edits to pages on your watchlist.