Help:Patrolled edits

Patrolled edits is a feature which allows specific users to mark new pages and items in Special:RecentChanges as "patrolled", meaning "approved". By default this is only available if you have the sysop permission; many wikis grant a permission to groups of users.

This feature is useful when reviewing recent changes for undesirable edits, link spam and vandalism. This allows people (with permission to do so) to coordinate their patrolling activity, such that edits get checked over once, with less wasted effort (different people checking the same edit).

This feature also allows setting trustworthy users' edits to be automatically patrolled, so that the people who review recent changes need not spend time doing unnecessary reviewing.

Marking edits as patrolled

 * To mark an edit as patrolled:
 * 1) Access Special:RecentChanges
 * Changes which are not patrolled display with a red exclamation mark ( ! ).
 * 1) Click the (diff) link next to an edit.
 * 2) To mark the edit as patrolled, click the   link.


 * To mark a new page as patrolled:


 * 1) Access Special:NewPages


 * New pages which are not patrolled display with a yellow background.


 * 1) To mark a new page as patrolled, visit it and click the    link near the bottom of the page.


 * To mark a new file as patrolled:


 * 1) Access Special:NewFiles


 * 1) If you want to see only unpatrolled files, check "  "


 * 1) To mark a new file or new file version as patrolled, visit it and click the    link near the bottom of the file description.

Caveats

 * There is currently no method to undo the marking of a page as patrolled.

Hiding patrolled edits from recent changes
Patrolled edits can be hidden from recent changes by adding to the URL in the following form:

Note: this works only for users with the or  right. This might change after is solved in future.

Enabling/disabling
Patrolled edits are enabled by default in MediaWiki 1.4 and later. To disable this, set in  to.

Permissions
In MediaWiki 1.4, patrolled edits are enabled for all users. To restrict this to sysops, set $wgOnlySysopsCanPatrol in  to.

In MediaWiki 1.5 and later, patrolled edits are enabled for sysops. Use the  configuration variable to assign this to new or existing user groups. See.

For instance, to create a patrollers group:

Automatic patrolling
In MediaWiki 1.6 through 1.8, there is a user preference available to users who are able to mark edits as patrolled. When set, this causes their edits to be patrolled automatically.

This option is not available if the patrolled edits feature is switched off.

In MediaWiki 1.9 this user preference was removed and replaced by a new "autopatrol" right, assigned only to sysops by default. Also, users cannot mark their own edits as patrolled.

Marker
The formatting of the unpatrolled edit marker can be altered using CSS. The exclamation mark displayed on the Recent changes log is styled using the class.

Log
Patrolling actions are listed in the Patrol log ([ example]).