Help:Diff

A diff shows the differences between two versions of a page on Wikipedia. A version of a page is created every time someone clicks on Save page after changing it. This version is called "revision". Each revision has a time and date when it was made. This is written in the history of the page. A diff lets you see what changed between two revisions of the same page.

There is a link to see the diff for every change in the page's history, in the user's changes, in new changes and in watchlists.

Example

This is how a diff looks like. A diff is useful because it makes it easier to see what changes have been made. It also allows to undo the change, or click on various links, for example to put a message in the talk page of the user who made the change.

Revision as of 22:32, Aug 03, 2003 (edit) Tim Starling (talk | contribs) (Edit summaries in diffs are great) ← Previous edit		Revision as of 00:10, Aug 18, 2003 (edit) (undo) Angela (talk | contribs)    [rollback] m (correction, + MediaWiki User's Guide)
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	For sysops and those with the rollback flag, a [[en:Wikipedia:revert|rollback]] button is shown allowing them to revert from the new version to the old one.		For sysops and those with the rollback flag, a [[en:Wikipedia:revert|rollback]] button is shown allowing them to revert from the new version to the old one.
−	This is only shown when looking at the diff between the current version and the one right before it.	+	This is only shown when viewing the diff between the recent version of a page and the last version by an author other than the one of the most current version.
	This example shows the top of the diff page, with links the described above.		This example shows the top of the diff page, with links the described above.
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	</table>		</table>
		+	[[MediaWiki User's Guide]]
		+