Currently, mail notifications of changes to pages on a user's watch list are formatted in a style with a human reader in mind.

The limitation that this notification mail is sent in the wiki's content language (which the user might not comprehend) is covered by T4592.

Some wikis' messages don't seem to include any reference to the change that actually triggered the notification (or the handy "See $link for all changes since your last visit.").

Additionally, automatic parsing and processing of these notifications is made very difficult by (any) natural language format that also may be changed anytime without prior notice.

Therefore, notifications should add mail headers for processing by MUAs and scripts that include the change's data in machine-readable form, e. g.:

X-MediaWiki-Diff-for-this-change: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Barack_Obama&diff=next&oldid=44
X-MediaWiki-Diff-for-all-changes-since: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Barack_Obama&diff=0&oldid=44
X-MediaWiki-PageID: 4711
X-MediaWiki-RevisionID: 44
X-MediaWiki-PageTitle: Barack_Obama
X-MediaWiki-BaseURL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php

(NB: "e. g.".)