Help talk:Recent changes patrol

Instructional page
The Phineas and Ferb Wiki enabled the Recent changes patrol this week. I have created a help page for our wiki that explains what it is and how to use it. I'd like to submit it for inclusion here on Wikia Help.

Second, if anyone can provide directions on how to create background tabs for other browsers like Safari, Google Chrome, et cetera, that would help out. I have IE 7 on my work computer, but that's at work. I use Opera and Firefox at home, so there hasn't been any need to update IE and it's still at v6. - RRabbit42 ( talk ) 16:59, December 19, 2009 (UTC)


 * Great work! I've copied across the bulk of it and credited the wiki at the end. :) Kirkburn (talk) 12:31, January 25, 2010 (UTC)


 * Here's Safari's method. - RRabbit42 ( leave a message ) 16:11, June 5, 2010 (UTC)
 * Safari: If "Ctrl-click opens a link in a new tab" is selected in your Preferences, hold down the CTRL key and click on the link. If it is not selected, hold down the CTRL and ALT keys, then click on the link.

Advice page
I have added a sub-page with advice on how to use the patrol and what to look for. I am submitting this also as a candidate to be added here. The "Inappropriate pictures" section would have to be modified to fit wikis that are not about cartoons. - RRabbit42 ( talk ) 21:25, January 16, 2010 (UTC)

Maximum number of changes to display
I have added a new section to "Filtering out patrolled edits" for the maximum number of changes that can be displayed to be patrolled. Any edits prior to 30 days from the current date cannot be marked as patrolled. Therefore, any members of the Recent changes patrol need to keep on top of the edits and not let them build up.

Many times, someone will have already fixed an old edit and so it technically wouldn't have to be marked as patrolled. But there's occasions where no one catches it. An edit that includes profanity or another violation of a wiki's policies may be missed if an administrator is relying on the Patrol to catch bad edits. - RRabbit42 ( leave a message ) 16:26, June 5, 2010 (UTC)

Further update
I had let the patrol go on the Phineas and Ferb Wiki for a bit and wanted to catch up. Previously, I could manually change the number of edits to show to a high number like 20,000 and it would display everything up to the 30-day limit. However, it appears that the Recent Changes page has been altered so that it displays a maximum of 5,000 changes (patrolled or unpatrolled).

For out wiki, that means anything prior to July 31st cannot be listed on the Recent Changes page, even when "Hide patrolled edits" has been selected. Last time I worked on the patrol was about July 18th, so I thought I still had about a week to get caught up.

Please double-check that I am correct in what I am seeing. Did Wikia lock the Recent Changes page to display a maximum of 5,000 edits?

If this is correct, then the "Maximum number of changes to display" section needs to be updated to include the following.


 * The Recent changes page will only show a maximum of 5,000 unpatrolled edits for up to 30 days, even additional changes or days are selected. Example: changing it with the "Recent changes options" (or manually updating the settings in the address bar of your browser) to display 60 days and 9000 changes.


 * Any edits made earlier than 30 days from the current date will not have an option to be marked as patrolled.


 * Though the Recent changes page has now been set to display a maximum of 5,000 edits (unpatrolled or patrolled), you can still see unpatrolled edits on individual pages by navigating through the history of the page, up to the 30 day maximum.


 * Due to these limitations, members of the Recent changes patrol are encouraged to patrol the edits regularly and not allow a backlog of un-checked edits to build up.

I will be leaving messages for the other members of the Patrol on our wiki, letting them know that they need to start participating in it so that we don't get in another situation like this. - RRabbit42 ( leave a message ) 14:27, August 11, 2010 (UTC)