Every editable page has an associated page history (sometimes called revision history or edit history), which is accessed by clicking View history at the top of the page. The page history contains a list of the page's previous revisions, including who made the changes and the nature of the edit or change. You can see who has developed the content for a particular page, or how it evolved.

Click on the History tab for a complete look at all the edits to a page. This feature means that nothing is ever lost! You can go back to any previous version just to take a look, or to revert the page back to that state.

With a little practice, you'll see how useful this function can be. Here are some tips:

• To view a specific version, click a date.
• To compare two specific versions, tick the left-column radio button of the older version and the right-column radio button of the newer version, and then click the "Compare selected versions" button.
• (cur) compares an old version with the current version
• (diff) compare a version with its predecessor
• (talk) provides a link to the user's talk page
• (contribs) shows all of the contributions made by that user
• m are minor changes

Diff: viewing the two versions of a page

The two versions are shown side-by-side, the old version is on the left. The diff shows differences per line.

Explanation of colours

Unchanged text is black on grey (only parts before and after changed text are shown). Paragraphs which have changed are highlighted in yellow on the old version side, and green on the new version side. Where whole paragraphs have been removed or inserted, the other side is blank (white). Removed text is shown in red on the old version. New text is shown in red on the new version.