Help:History
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The revision history of a page is viewed by clicking on the "View history" tab. One can then select any two revisions and click "Compare selected revisions" to view the diff. Contents of deleted revisions will not be accessible to users lacking the necessary user rights.
Summary
- The page shows the newest changes first, followed by older ones.
- To view a specific version, click its date.
- Click "cur" to compare an old version with a current one.
- Click "prev" to compare a version with its predecessor.
- To compare two versions, select the left button for the older version and the right button for the newer one. Afterward, click the "Compare selected revisions" button.
- A minor edit is indicated with "m".
Searching for a revision
Users can use the Wikiblame tool to search for revisions from a specific author, or character strings in the page of any revision.
Navigating the revision history page
Here's what a page history looks like in the default skin.
Let's examine each labeled function:
- "Revision history" is suffixed to the page name.
- This displays the last 50 edits after the ones listed currently.
- These numbers tell you how many changes you can see listed on a page: 20, 50, 100, 250, or 500.
- The "(cur)" option links to a page showing the changes made between the selected version and the current version of the page.
- The "(prev)" option links to a page showing the difference between the selected version and the version just below it.
- You can compare two versions of a page using radio buttons. The left button links to the previous, and the right button links to the latter. Just select any versions you want, then click "Compare selected revisions".
- This displays when edits were made, using local time settings. Clicking the date and time links you to the version from that moment, which may differ from the current one.
- This shows the contributor's username or IP address.
- This is the edit summary, users write into the box before submitting an edit.
- When an edit summary begins with a grey text and an arrow link, it means the user only edited the section mentioned in the grey text. This is added automatically when editing a section.
- "m" signifies a minor edit to a page, like fixing a spelling mistake.
When a page's name is changed using the move feature, its full edit history which includes a before and after the change is shown on the new page name. The old name optionally becomes a redirect with only its initial history.
When two pages are history merged, one becomes a redirect with no edit history, while the other contains the full edit history of both pages.
URLs
Use this URL format to display edits made before a certain UTC date or to limit the number of edits shown:
Or for an earlier date and time specified in UTC:
The second one is in timestamp format.
Watched pages
If you check the history of a watched page without looking at the page itself first, the latest edit might have a marker saying
This happens if someone else made the edit and you haven't seen the page since.
Web feeds
To get Web feeds (RSS and Atom) for a page's history, you can add "&feed=rss" or "&feed=atom" to the URL of the history page. This will show the last 10 edits with links to the full diff page in XML format. Some browsers may offer options like sorting by author (see Syndication).
The number of revisions
On a history page list, go to any revision after the second one and click on (cur) for the latest edit. This will show you the changes between that revision edit and the most recent one. Look above the difference table to find the number of intermediate revisions. Add 2 to that number, and you'll have the total number of revisions in the history.
Time format
You can adjust the date format on the history page in your preferences.
Deleting a page
Deleting a page is more extreme than just removing content or redirecting the page. When a page is deleted, regular users can't access its history anymore. Consequently, if content has been moved or copied with proper attribution, that attribution is lost when the original page is deleted.
If someone edits a deleted page, their edits won't show up in their usual User contributions list. Administrators can still see those edits and restore the deleted page if needed (see w:Wikipedia:Viewing and restoring deleted pages).
Sometimes, when a page is deleted, it's important to decide whether to keep its revision history. If the history should be kept:
- Turn the page into a redirect, or rename it to a more fitting redirect if needed.
- If a redirect isn't appropriate, archive the page. If the content isn't suitable for a current version or an archive, replace it with a note explaining the archive's purpose.
Composite pages (transclusion)
A section of a page may be an included separate page (via a method known as Transclusion), see composite pages. A separate edit history is provided for the section, and this transcluded page must be watched separately. See Help:Transclusion.
Image history
You can change or edit an image file by uploading a new one with the same name. All versions of the image are saved, and you can see the history of changes on the image description page.
Linking to a particular version of a page
Sometimes it's helpful to provide a direct link to a particular version of a page. This might be necessary, for instance, if someone has reviewed a Wikipedia article and wants to specify which exact version they reviewed.
You can use the page history to see old versions of a page if it's not the current version. The URL of the old version in the browser's location bar can be used as a permanent reference for that version.
See also Old versions of pages.
Change history to the wikitext aren't the same as change history to the rendered page:
- If a page has a time-based variable, what you see on it changes with time. For example, {{CURRENTTIME}} shows the current time when you view the page, while {{subst:CURRENTTIME}} shows the time when that version of the page was saved. However, there's no variable for the time when a specific version was saved.
- Templates and images might change based on time-related variables in the expressions used to refer to them.
- You can only use the current versions of templates and images unless you rename old versions. Keep in mind that templates within these templates might also have been updated.
- Wikidata's current interwiki links are used.
To create a permanent link, save the webpage as an HTML file and provide the URL. This HTML file includes all the template content, so changes or removals of templates won't affect it. However, if images are deleted, it will impact the HTML file.
To create wikitext that doesn't rely on templates, use "subst:" and repeat if needed, or Special:ExpandTemplates
See also Help:Downloading pages.
Special:Export
Special:Export creates an XML file containing the wikitext of one or more chosen pages, along with details like date, time, user, and edit summary. How it appears depends on the browser; some may show links to expand or collapse sections. You can also view the XML source directly in your browser or with any program after saving the file locally.
The feature lets you search for text across multiple specified pages. See XML export.
Reverting changes to a page
If you don't like the changes you made to your new pages, don't worry. You can revert to any earlier version of the page.
See also
- Manual:Parameters to index.php#History
- XTools - A tool to do the following on a revision history page:
- Organize the page history according to the editor.
- Determine the edit count for each editor.
- The program works on various Wikimedia sites and can be downloaded for use on other MediaWiki platforms with necessary tweaks.