Help:Watchlist

Watchlists are a way on Pikmin Fanon to keep up to date on the pages you find important. Only registered users can have a watchlist.

To watch a page, click on a "watch" button on the toolbar above the page. Once you click the "watch" button, the page should be on your watchlist and a message will appear saying, " (PAGENAME) " and its discussion page has been moved to your watchlist."

To unwatch a page, go to your watchlist and click the "Edit your list of watched pages" link found near the top-left corner. Then check the squared button next to all of the pages you want to remove and then click the "Remove" button.

Watchlist preferences
On your preferences page, there are also a set of options that you can select for your watchlist, which includes:
 * Receiving an e-mail whenever a page on your watchlist is changed, go to the "E-mail options" box in the "User profile" tab in your preferences, and check the box that says "E-mail me when a page on my watchlist is changed".
 * The number of days to show edits from in the watchlist and the maximum number of changes to show in the expanded watchlist can be changed in the "Display options" box of the "Watchlist" tab in your preferences.

Additionally, additional watchlist options are available in the "Advanced options" box of the "Watchlist" tab.

What you cannot watch
The watchlist can only detect actual edits to the wikitext of the page.


 * Categories
 * Watching an category also means watching only the editable part. It is not possible to watch a category in the sense of being notified if pages are added or removed. With "related changes," additions to categories can be detected; for removals, one has to watch all pages in the category.


 * Images
 * Watching an image means watching only the editable part. The watchlist will not show uploads of new versions of images.


 * Templates:
 * Changes to transcluded pages can change the way the watched page is rendered, however, these changes do not appear in the watchlist. For more information, see this page. One may choose to watch all the templates used, the templates used by these templates, etc.

Watching a nonexistent page
One can watch a nonexistent page, which results in the page appearing in the watchlist changes log when somebody creates it. Take it into this manner, if you watch a page that does not yet have a talk page, you will be notified (likely via Watchlist), when someone starts a new discussion on the talk page.

You can watch a page even if neither the content page nor the talk page exists. To do that, go to the page's URL, either by typing the URL directly or following a (broken) link, and then press "Watch" (depending on the skin you have, you may have to press Cancel before getting the link watched).

Page moves
If a page you have watched is moved to a new title, the new title will be automatically added to your watchlist. Even if the page is later moved back, the new title will remain on your watchlist along with the old one.

Even if the new title is deleted after the page has been moved back, a note about the deletion will appear on your watchlist, and the title will remain in your list of watched pages. If you notice mysterious nonexistent pages appearing on your watchlist, this is the most likely the explanation.

Recent changes feature
Your watchlist displays a list of changes made to the pages you are watching, with the most recent edits at the top, providing a Recent changes-type list that shows only the pages you are particularly interested in. This makes it easy for you to see the improvements that others have made to these pages so that you can continue to build on each other's work to improve the page. By default, the watchlist shows edits from the last three days. You can choose other time periods from the links at the top of the Watchlist page, but the page will reset to show three days again the next time you visit it. There is no limit to how many pages you can watch, but if you watch more than 1000, the default cutoff for the watchlist will be 12 hours instead of three days. As a result, this reduces server load and allows the page to be displayed more quickly. Also, don't put that many pages on your watchlist, which you can avoid. Watched pages will also appear in bold on recent changes.

Privacy
Ordinary users or staffs cannot tell what is on your watchlist, or who is watching any particular page. Developers who have access to the servers that hold the Pikmin Fanon wiki's database can figure out this kind of information. Publicly available database dumps do not include this kind of information.