What is an anonymous page?

[mazzly]

Someone on our wiki created an anonymous page... It doesn't show up in Special:RecentChanges

But it shows up in out "Wiki: Recent activity"-widget

What is the purpose of an anonymous page?
How is it different from a normal page?

[pegasus]

Regarding Special:RecentChanges, you probably have AdminCP > Setup > Options > VaultWiki: Content Types > Page-types to show in Special page results by default, with "Anonymous pages" unchecked but other options checked, which would require you to check it manually in the filters in order to see them. My setting has no filter set, so I see Anonymous page results on my wiki's Special:RecentChanges.

Regarding the purpose of an anonymous page, the AdminCP > Structures > Content Types description sums it up well:

The URLs for Anonymous pages don't include the page's title. In general, they do not interact with other wiki pages and cannot be linked to without knowing the page's full URL. Since wiki pages cannot usually share titles, this is useful if you want to use wiki functionality for a page but don't want to use up that title.

A common real-world use case where you may see heavy use of Anonymous pages:
- On some sites that use Feeds with Wiki Pages for personal blogging, it can be useful to force users to use Anonymous pages for their personal entries, so they don't conflict titles with each other, themselves, or any of the site's main wiki content.

[mazzly]

One thing I noticed, not sure if bug or not: If I create a synonym for an anonymous page, that one will autolink from other wiki content..

[pegasus]

That is intentional, since the synonyms aren't anonymous.