Editing Help:Watchlist (section)

=== Options ===

There are various options available to control how the list of changes is displayed:
* '''Show/hide different types of edit''': You may choose to hide or show minor edits, bot edits, one's own edits, edits by logged-out users, edits by logged-in users, [[#page categorization|page categorization]] and edits made at a [[Wikipedia:Wikidata|Wikidata]] page associated with a watched page. Links for this purpose appear at the top of the watchlist page. Initially the default behavior for all of these is "show", except for Wikidata and page categorization. The Wikidata option is omitted if you enable "Group changes by page" at {{Section link|Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rc}}. It does not work with this feature.
** The defaults can be changed using the options available on [[Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist|the "Watchlist" tab of your user preferences]].
** If the most recent edit to a page is hidden and "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" is not enabled in preferences then the page will not appear on the watchlist. An earlier edit is not shown instead.<ref>[[bugzilla:9790|Bug 9790]]: Watchlist doesn't show earlier normal edits when hiding bot edits or minor edits.</ref>
* '''Time period covered''': You can choose how many hours or days you want the list of changes to go back, using the links at the top of the watchlist. For the maximum (30 days), select "all". For non-standard values, select one of the available links and then edit the value after "days=" in the [[URL]].
** The default value, which must be a number of days not greater than 7, is set on [[Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist|the "Watchlist" tab of your user preferences]]. Note that there may be a later cut-off due to the limit on the number of displayed changes, described below.
* '''Restrict by namespace''': You can restrict the list to changes in a specified [[WP:Namespace|namespace]], using the "Namespace" drop-down box (check "Invert selection" to ''exclude'' the specified namespace).
* '''Enhanced watchlist''':
** You can elect to display only the last edit to each watched page ("Simple watchlist"). This is currently the default, but can produce misleading results (for example, if the last edit to a page was minor, then there is no indication that a previous non-minor edit occurred). '''To ensure that all changes are displayed, check the "Expand watchlist..." option on [[Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist|the "Watchlist" tab of your user preferences]].'''
** Having selected the expanded watchlist, you can choose "[[Help:enhanced recent changes|enhanced]]" display mode, which groups together all changes made to each page on a given day. Click on the blue arrows to the left of the list to expand or collapse each group. This option applies to both the watchlist and recent changes, and for this reason appears on [[Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rc|the "Recent changes" tab of user preferences]], not the "Watchlist" tab.<ref>[[bugzilla:35768|Bug 35768]]: Current positioning of the "Enhanced watchlist" preference is confusing.</ref>
** You may choose to set the "Maximum number of changes to show in expanded watchlist" (on the "Watchlist" tab of user preferences). The maximum possible number of changes to display is currently 1000. If this causes a later time cutoff than you desired, you can see earlier changes by filtering by type or namespace, as described above.