How the changelog works

What gets published, how versions are assigned, and the three ways to follow releases.

The Changelog is the record of what has actually shipped. It is the end of the pipeline that starts when you post something.

Every entry carries a version

Entries are numbered with Semantic Versioning — x.y.z, three parts, no suffixes:

x is the platform phase
y means a service was released or majorly updated
z covers documentation, fixes, retrofits and minor updates

So the number tells you the weight of a release before you read a word of it. See How versioning works for the full mapping.

History has been backfilled

The changelog does not start the day this portal went live. Entries from the wiki's news page have been merged into it retroactively and given versions, so the history reads as one continuous line rather than starting mid-story.

Two consequences worth knowing:

Early entries were written as news items, so their tone varies from later ones
Versions were assigned retroactively to past releases, so the numbering is a reconstruction rather than something recorded at the time

Three ways to follow it

Read it on the site — feedback.thinkhead.org/changelog, newest first.

Subscribe by RSS — feedback.thinkhead.org/changelog/feed is a standard RSS 2.0 feed. Any reader can consume it, no account needed, nothing to configure, and it never lands in a spam folder. This is the most reliable way to follow releases without checking the site.

Get an email — if you are subscribed to a post that gets linked to a changelog entry, you are notified when it publishes. You are subscribed automatically to anything you post or comment on.

Entries link back to posts

An entry can reference the posts it resolves. That link is the point: if you voted for something, you can trace the line from your vote to the release it shipped in.

Entries can be scheduled

An entry can be written ahead of time and published on a set date, so an announcement is prepared before a release rather than written in a hurry afterwards.

Changelog versus the wiki's news page

Now that history has been merged, the changelog is the primary record of what shipped. The news page remains on the wiki and still covers platform-wide context, including infrastructure work with no user-facing post behind it.

If you only want to know when the things you asked for are done, follow the changelog — or better, its RSS feed.