Kate Turner has written a tool that makes it possible to follow the recent
changes of any Wikimedia project in real-time, in a web browser:
http://kohl.wikimedia.org/cgi-bin/rcdumper?d=enwiki
See
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Realtime_recent_changes
for information on how to get it for different wikis and in different
interface languages.
The tool is currently in BETA. As I understand it, the autoscrolling only
works in Mozilla. But it's already very nice to look at and will be an
excellent tool both for vandalism patrol and for presenting Wikimedia.
It's also very useful on smaller wikis like Meta, where you can keep it
running in the background and go back later to see what's happened.
I'd like to thank Kate again for writing this tool. I'd also like to ask
all of you to add a link to it to your local [[<Project>:Recentchanges]]
(for some reason this page is not in the MediaWiki namespace yet). - It's
mature enough already to do that. But please point out that it is still in
BETA.
Kate has also written a few other useful tools, which can be found here:
http://kate.wikimedia.org/kates-tools/index.action
* Count edits of a user
* "Six degrees of separation" between two pages
* Check for existence of a username on different wikis
* Unified watchlist for all wikis you work on
Note that you'll have to create an account and "hook up" your existing
Wikimedia usernames for the unified watchlist to work.
I never cease to be amazed by the creativity of Wikimedia users and
developers.
All best,
Erik