Watching a MediaWiki using RSS

Maddin — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 10:31:07 GMT

Watching a wiki for interesting changes over a long period of time can be rather tiresome, especially when the wiki is rather large.

Fortunately a growing number of wikis are using the MediaWiki-software (the code that runs the wikipedia) nowadays. A little know fact is that MediaWiki supports RSS-feeds for the "new pages" and "recent changes" pages out of the box. Most Wikis don’t publicly link to them but they exist anyway.

To access the "recent changes"-feed just add either

/index.php/Spezial:Recentchanges?feed=rss[or] /index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&feed=rss

to the wiki’s URL (most instances support both paths; some recognize only one of the two variants). For the "new pages" use

/index.php/Spezial:Newpages?feed=rss [or] /index.php?title=Special:Newpages&feed=rss

This method works at least for all wikis which I am reading. Here is for example the recent changes-feed of the iPod-Linux wiki.

Reading a book. One page at a time.

Maddin — Mon, 17 Jan 2005 14:08:56 GMT

Russel Beattie hacked a little service for mobdex to deliver public domain books via rss (one or more pages per day).

Many of us are too busy to read classic books out there, instead choosing "page turners" or books that are more applicable to our every day lives (like a some new marketing book). But we do have time to zip through our aggregator daily, right? So by taking a 500 page novel and distributing it, a few pages at a time, via RSS, we could read a new book in a month or so without even trying.

I have just started to read "A Tale of Two Cities". At the pace of one page per day, I should be finished by summer 2006.

[ranchero.com]

It's a shampoo world anyway

Watching a MediaWiki using RSS

Reading a book. One page at a time.