Ta for the pointers :) I don't think any of the bug reports quite get there, but "individual page histories into feeds" is exactly what I was thinking about [1] To be all fashionable about it, it's the "long tail" thing. There are a lot of people who, between them, are interested in a lot of articles. But on average there is only going to be one or two people passionate about one given article. At the moment, we are assuming either - a (relatively) few people monitor lots of pages - lots of people are going to login and check their (small) watchlists fairly regularly Imagine I am interested in the "random weird topic" page. I'd like to be notified of updates to this page, but I won't be checking in daily just in case. Email alerts would be perfect, and I note that it *could* be a wonderfully seperated (ad sponsered) service (low traffic for the user, relevent ads, useful service, entirely independent) Ok, why the WP-tech list? [1] This only happens if it is easy (and or massively popular, which it isn't right now) It could be done in a couple of ways. WP offering RSS feeds of page histories is one. It's not optimally efficient use of server resources or bandwidth. WP sending out emails to users itself is another, but ... core business ... focus ... Anyone could, given the interest (ad revenue), set up a site/service that would easily let me "bookmark" a wikipedia page, and deliver this service. It still presents problems about such an organisation polling a bunch of pages every day or so. Yes, you could block them, but why block a service that is mutually usefull all round? Someone like Bloglines could (with arrangement) download the DB nightly and then email out daily updates. More efficient all round. Bloglines (or similar) is a commercial company, so I'm sure they might help with the logistics of a daily DB dump. This then benefits everyone in the community. I'm in no way associated with bloglines, other than as a end user of the service. I'd also be quite happy with any other solution. There are a bunch of articles I am interested in, but I won't be logging in to watchlist them. That might mean I am lazy, and so be it. But some form of RSS feed of page histories would be a really neat feature to have.

Daniel Wunsch wrote: Hoi, What if the article is not on #enrc.wikipedia channel ?? It is funny that it is often assumed that there is only wikipedia :) and therefore as now only one channel .. Thanks, GerardM

It occured to me that polling Recent Changes, based on the time since last polling is maybe another solution to this. What I like about this is that, if it was implemented: - It would automatically work for *any* MediaWiki installation - It would not be hard to add support for other wiki implementations - It's entirely external to MediaWiki (no code changes) and should be fairly low-impact (poll once per hour?) You are then free to offer a variety of services to an unlimited number of users - email on each edit - email no more than once per hour/day/week/month - email after 5 (or more) edits - sms / text to mobile/cell phone [1] - IM / irc of any variety - update rss feed [1] In the UK you can do reverse billing, which means WP could earn money when WP sends an SMS to someone, assuming the someone has signed up for this service. I suggest this would be a way to raise revenues for WP and could be run as an entirely independent project.