Jump to content

Make RecentChanges always store the most recent (e.g.) 100 changes, irrespective of time (Community Wishlist/W497)

Under review
From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki

View all wishes.

Description

Currently the recentchanges table contains the last 30 days of changes, no matter whether that represents 50,000 changes or 5 changes - or even none at all on highly inactive wikis.

In my opinion this table should be changed to store the last 30 days of changes as well as the most recent, say, 100 changes. (From a set theory point of view, this is the union of the set of changes in the last 30 days with the set of the last 100 changes). On most wikis this would make no difference at all, as more than 100 changes occur during each 30-day period. But on small wikis, it would mean that Special:RecentChanges always has something to display, in cases where it may currently be empty or almost empty much of the time.

This would make it considerably easier to gauge activity levels and identify active users/core contributors on very small WMF wikis.

Related wishes: View older entries on RecentChanges/Watchlist (Community Wishlist/W262), Increase the maximum number of edits and days to show in the Watchlist (Community Wishlist/W422)

Assigned focus area

Unassigned

Type of wish
System change
Tags
Affected users

Those who monitor small WMF wikis (e.g. m:SWMT)

Other details
Voting

This wish currently has 10 supporters. Voting for this wish is open until it is completed.

Supporters of this wish
Support This, that and the other (talk) 09:06, 17 January 2026
Support Paloi Sciurala (talk) 13:44, 21 January 2026
Support Matěj Suchánek (talk) 11:45, 17 February 2026
Support You can actually view up to 180 days by manipulating the URL, but on some super dead wikis, this may still show nothing. Supertian8 (talk) 19:35, 25 February 2026
Support Warudo (talk) 20:58, 1 March 2026
Support No brainer. Nardog (talk) 06:14, 6 March 2026
Support Hakimi97 (talk) 11:27, 3 April 2026
Support Respublik (talk) 21:45, 13 April 2026
Support Pppery (talk) 22:58, 14 April 2026
Support SnorlaxMonster (talk) 16:51, 27 June 2026