diff --git a/IkiWiki/Plugin/conditional.pm b/IkiWiki/Plugin/conditional.pm
index 2a25135fe..57db01054 100644
--- a/IkiWiki/Plugin/conditional.pm
+++ b/IkiWiki/Plugin/conditional.pm
@@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ sub preprocess_if (@) { #{{{
 		# An optimisation to avoid needless looping over every page
 		# and adding of dependencies for simple uses of some of the
 		# tests.
-		$params{test} =~ /^(enabled|sourcepage|destpage)\((.*)\)$/) {
+		$params{test} =~ /^\s*\!?\s*(enabled|sourcepage|destpage|included)\((.*)\)\s*$/) {
 		add_depends($params{page}, "$params{test} and $params{page}");
 		$result=pagespec_match($params{page}, $params{test},
 				location => $params{page},
diff --git a/debian/changelog b/debian/changelog
index aca79c6d1..c48d538e9 100644
--- a/debian/changelog
+++ b/debian/changelog
@@ -4,6 +4,9 @@ ikiwiki (2.17) UNRELEASED; urgency=low
   * redir: Support for specifying anchors.
   * img: Avoid nesting images when linking to another image. Closes: #457780
   * img: Allow the link parameter to point to an exterior url.
+  * conditional: Improve regexp testing for simple uses of pagespecs
+    that match only the page using the directive, adding 'included()'
+    and supporting negated pagespecs and added whitespace.
 
  -- Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>  Wed, 19 Dec 2007 16:39:07 -0500