Wikpedia Watchlist RSS Feed Tutorial

Step-by-step guide to getting an RSS feed for your Wikipedia watchlist.
A version of this page is also available on my Wikipedia User Page

Most of the solutions for producing an RSS feed for your Wikipedia watchlist involve ruby and python scripts which either require allowing another server to use your password or hosting the script on your own server. So I present to you a 'simple' solution for producing an RSS feed from your watchlist using public watchlists.

This may be a bit tedious for users with large watchlists Explanation

Using a public watchlist removes the requirement of authentication (login) to view a watchlist allowing an RSS feed to be used.

Public watchlists are designed to be used for large projects spanning many pages, to allow users to follow updates on pages within the scope of that project.

But a user may set-up a public watchlist containing their own select pages to be followed, and an RSS feed to be taken from this.

Setting up an item list

Create a User sub-page (How to create a subpage)

Using the {{tl|pwli|}} tags create a list of items for your watchlist in you user pages.

• Use {{pwli|Page Name}} to add a page to the watchlist
• Use {{plimg|Image Name}} to add an image to the watchlist

This creates a public watchlist.

Example
In order to watch the pages

• RSS
• Lanfranc Cigala

• Hamilton (town), New York
• Image of a zonky

A user page was created at User:Lastsal/Watchlist RSS/Example

And the following text used to create the list part of the watchlist,

{{pwli|RSS}}
{{pwli|Lanfranc Cigala}}
{{pwli|Hamilton (town), New York}}


We now have a have a list of pages to watch and can link to them as a watchlist.

Creating a public watchlist

These items must now be linked to order to set them up as a public watchlist. On any User page add the following text,

{{public watchlist|Watchlist Location}}

Example


The code
{{public watchlist|User:Lastsal/Watchlist RSS/Example}}

creates the template box below on the page,



Finding your public watchlist RSS feed

Open the link from the template box labelled 'Check the watchlist' which will take you to a page named 'Changes Related to...', which should look very similar to a normal User watchlist,

Example

User:Lastsal/Watchlist RSS/Example
Your browser may pick up the RSS feed for this page automatically, Firefox shows the RSS icon at the end of the address bar, and click on it to get your feed.

For the direct link to the feed from the page locate the 'toolbox' at the lower left-hand side of the page, and choose either the RSS option



Et voila, there you have your own simple watchlist RSS feed,

The RSS feed

The RSS feed produced tends to look very pretty and be quite useful, follow the link for a screenshot of a how a public watchlist item in Google's RSS reader Google Reader and in Newsgator,

Feed item in Google Reader



Feed item in Newsgator



It is also possible to receive your watchlist as emails, there are quite a few services which 'convert' RSS feeds into emails. But I recommend RSSFWD since it also allows you to combine all the updates into daily emails and also recieve them all in one Gmail conversation.

Issues

By the nature of the solution your watchlist is not longer private, though if hidden away on a new unlinked user page it is unlikely to be found.

Users with extensive watchlists will require some effort to transfer their current watchlist items to a new public watchlists.

Wishlist

• Option of RSS feeds for User watchlists, and the choice to remove the authentication from the feeds.
• A tool to transfer a user's current watchlist to a public watchlist.
• A tool to have an 'add to public watchlist' button, to save manual updating of additions.

Note

After getting hooked on Wikipedia I needed an RSS feed for my watchlist in order to condense my online time using an RSS reader.

Like many others I did a Google search and came upon the few scripts which will log-on for you and create an RSS feed. So I spent a couple days of searching and head scratching for the simpler solution.

After I came up with this idea I did some searching to see if anybody had thought of this before. A quick Google search came up with this Signpost report which alluded to this method,

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-12-10/Technology report

and this post which thought of this solution before it became available.

http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/2007-November/002177.html

Thanks

As far as I can see most of the work to set up the Public Watchlists was done by Wikipedia user Antaeus Feldspar .