When you make an edit at a wiki, the system is transparent by showing the edit on the Special:Recentchanges page. This page shows the activity and the health of a wiki.

RecentChanges patrollers look at every edit made to this wiki to ensure that each is constructive.

The (diff) link shows the difference in the edits between the current version and the last version.

The (hist) links to history of all the edits of the page.

There are +- numbers next to the edits, that refers to the number of characters added or deleted. This helps people look for patterns of activity. e.g. spammers and vandals.

There are small m's - those denote minor edits, usually for copy editing.

There are capital N's which point out newly created pages.