I'm not sure exactly what conditions trigger that flag, but I'm pretty sure the reason you're seeing so many rctype="external" edits is that interwiki links (usually links to the article in other languages), are now provided by Wikidata.

So my guess as to your original question is that these are edits triggered by some external factor changing, or made by an external entity (via AddBot in Wikidata's case).

Mahmoud

On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 7:47 PM, Liu Chenheng <liuchenheng@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi, All,
Does anybody know what the meaning of rctype="external" in recent change list is. I saw a lot of this type of changes.

Thanks.

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