Wikipedia:User contributions
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
User contributions pages list the edits that a particular user has made. These pages are project specific, so a user contributions page for meta will not show the edits that user has made to Wikipedia or any other project.
Checking your contributions is useful to refresh your memory about which pages you have worked on (and to easily access these again), but can also be used to find out whether there have been any subsequent edits (see below). This makes it possible to "watch" pages even if you haven't put them on your watchlist. Other users' user contribution pages can also be accessed and are useful for seeing how other users have contributed. They can be used to track down vandals, copyright violations, etc.
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[edit] Accessing a user contributions page
[edit] Accessing your own user contributions page
- To access your own user contributions page, click My contributions. This is displayed either at the top of the page, or on the left hand side.
[edit] Accessing other user's user contributions page
- If the user has an account (username): bring up the user page and click User contributions - this works even if the user page has not been edited yet (i.e. an edit box displays).
- If the user has no login name, two methods are:
- Click on the IP address in Recent Changes or Page History
- Put the IP address in the search box and press Go
[edit] Using a user contributions page
Below is an example of a user contributions page using the default skin:
Edits are shown from newest to oldest. Each edit takes up one line which shows; time & date, the page name and the edit summary, as well as other diagnostic information. Lets have a look at some of the functions of this page:
- The username or IP of the contributor appears here.
- You can select a namespace to filter your results. For example, to see only templates select Template from the drop down list and press Go.
- This gives the time and date of the edit.
- (hist) takes you to the page history, so you can see all edits made to that page. This can be useful if someone has updated a page you have worked on, and you want to see their changes.
- (diff) takes you to a diff page showing the changes between that edit and the current revision. The current revision appears below the changes so you can see how the page is now rendered.
- m stands for minor edit (small corrections to a page). These help you understand the type of changes that have been made.
- This is the name of the page the edit took place on. The current page name is used, so if the page has been renamed the name displayed will be different.
- This is the edit summary. It is the text the user wrote in the edit summary box (below the edit box).
- (top) signifies that the edit is the current revision. The page is as the user last saved it. This can be used to watch pages (if your last edit to the page does not display (top) the page has been changed). Sysops also have a rollback link here, see Help:Reverting.
- This edit summary begins with an arrow link and grey text. This means the user has only edited a section of the page (named in the grey text). This text is automatically added when you edit a section. The black text is a standard edit summary and is added by the user.
- This user has few edits, so all their edits fit onto one page. When their edits span more than one page, the black text in brackets will become links. These links take you to the user's most recent edits (Latest), oldest edits (Earliest) or the next or previous page of edits (Next n / Previous n).
- The blue numbers list the number of edits displayed on a page - 20, 50, 100, 250 or 500. A higher number increases the length of a page but reduces the number of pages The number you select replaces n in the links to the previous or next pages e.g. (Next 100 / Previous 100). Also note that a modification of the URL can allow one to view up to 5000 edits on one page.
[edit] Also shown
- The creation of a new page, indicated by an N.
[edit] Not shown
- Edits from a page that has been deleted afterwards (unless it has been restored)
- Uploading a new image with the same name as one that already exists, thus replacing it
- The deletion or restoration (undeletion) of a page (if the user is a sysop)
[edit] User styles
The page body has selector body.page-Special_Contributions, so we can e.g. use the CSS
body.page-Special_Contributions ul { list-style: decimal }
to number the backlinks.
[edit] URLs and links
A user contributions URL looks like this: http://en.wikipedia.org../../../../articles/c/o/n/Special%7EContributions_de0d.html or http://en.wikipedia.org../../../../articles/c/o/n/Special%7EContributions_XX_0269.html (for this wiki) where XX is the user name or IP address.
Change the sub-site to view your contributions on that particular subsite. (www.wikipedia.org, meta.wikimedia.org, etc.)
To link to a user contributions page you can also use this shorter form: Special:Contributions/XX.
Interwiki links work as normal e.g. w:Special:Contributions/XX.
You can view edits from only one namespace. Each namespace has an associated number. Restricting to one namespace can be done with the long form URL only (in this example the namespace is number 4): http://en.wikipedia.org../../../../articles/c/o/n/Special%7EContributions_de0d.html
[edit] Privacy
Your contributions can be viewed by anyone - please be mindful of this. Check the privacy policy, if any, of the site you use; for meta: m:Privacy policy
[edit] First edit
When using the user contributions feature to determine when a user starting editing on a wiki, note that edits may have been made in another wiki, while later the page has been imported.
Also, until ca. 2004 there was a bug, which has been fixed but not retroactively, as follows:
- If a moved page is moved back, the edit history of the page with the intermediate title shows the latest move only, with the corresponding user name, but with the date and time of the first move(!).
Therefore, if the oldest entries in the user contributions list are moves, they most likely do not represent any activity of the user on the stated dates.
