Chapter 6. Monitoring Changes
After you edit a Wikipedia article, other editors may, in turn, change the changes youâve made. As one of the notes at the bottom of the standard edit screen says, âIf you donât want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed for profit by others, do not submit it.â Edited mercilessly doesnât necessarily mean your words will be ripped apart, but they could be. Once youâve submitted work to Wikipedia, itâs fair game.
Rather than completely abandoning your edit to its fate, you probably want to check in and see how itâs faring. Most experienced editors monitor articles theyâve edited, both to make sure other editors treat their edits reasonably, and to learn from what other editors do. This chapter will show you a number of ways to watch articles for changes, whether or not youâve edited them.
The User Contributions Page
When youâre starting out, Wikipediaâs list of your editsâyour User contributions pageâis a handy way to monitor changes to pages youâve edited. You get to that list by clicking the âmy contributionsâ link near the upper-right corner of your screen (assuming youâre logged in). Youâll see something like Figure 6-1.
Figure 6-1. On the User contributions page, if youâve done the most recent edit of an article, youâll see âtopâ, in bold, at the end of its row. Here you see five edits ...
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