7 Components: the Function Pages - Developers

Settings
Use of the page
Control system
RSS feed
Random page
What links here?
Use of the page
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You can determine whether minor edits are displayed via the user
settings (see Chapter 7.3). You also have the opportunity to activate
the enhanced display of Recent changes. This primarily summarizes
several changes by a user on the same day. In such a case, an arrow
appears at the beginning of the line. If you click it, the individual edits
will unfold below.
The special page Recent changes allow you to be at the pulse of
the wiki, so to speak. On one hand, you find out what the current hot
topics are that are being fervently worked on, since they will have
several edits. On the other hand, using that page, you can check new
entries to its content. This makes Recent changes an indispensable
tool for those who have taken on the role of a maintainer in a wiki.
If several participants take on quality assurance tasks, they have
to coordinate their work with each other so that they do not all end
up checking the same page. There is a control system for this purpose.
Pages that have not yet been checked are marked in the Recent
Changes area with a red exclamation point. If a user follows the
“Diff” link, he or she will find a further message in the difference
display, “Mark this article as patrolled.” When this button is clicked,
the exclamation point disappears in the Recent changes display, and
everyone can see that the modifications have already been checked.
The versions page offers the possibility of having the content read
out via newsfeed. This is done with special programs that regularly
retrieve and process the content of the feed. In this way, one can
keep abreast of changes to the content. In the current version, the
formats RSS and Atom are available. The corresponding links, if
available, are in the toolbox.
The special page Random page does exactly what it says. It displays
a random article from the namespace Main. This is especially
useful in a wiki having an encyclopedic character, because it offers
an introduction platform from which to “browse the wiki.” This page
once again stresses the deliberately playful nature of a wiki.
The option What links here harbors a very simple, yet just as
powerful function. It lists all pages containing links to the current
page (backlinks). In principle, this switches the direction of the link;
one can now follow it back the other way. If you want to view links
on another page than the one you are on, you have to change the
value indicated in the URL after &target to the respective page
(see the beginning of this chapter).
There is an abundance of applications that make this function particularly
interesting. For instance, it is possible to obtain an idea of
the context in which a page is integrated. When you know what topics
link to a specific text, you can draw conclusions as to the direction
and perhaps even the quality of the article. Furthermore, you
7 Components: the Function Pages