Wikis are dynamic. Something that was still on a certain page yesterday can be on a different page today, can have been changed or even have been deleted. A well-ordered information network can have become utter chaos — at least from your point of view. In such cases the version management and the two change views can be a great help.

Subsequent to the successful sending of a changed or newly created Wiki page, you receive a message that a new version has been created. If you change the same page within the next 30 minutes, you receive a message that the changes have been saved but that no new version has been created. What is a version? Simply formulated, it is a snapshot of a Wiki page at a certain point in time. Since a new version is created with every change process, the Version management system makes the entire developmental history available for your use.

You can not “damage” anything because the changes are always saved and remain comprehensible. As a consequence of this, changes can be undone, and you are free to experiment.

Starting at 1, the versions are consecutively numbered. You can directly access the last 10 versions of a page in the information box at the right.

Please note that you cannot change the old versions. This is made clear by information displayed in place of the customary Edit button:

By utilizing the direct access to the last several versions you can examine the individual states completely. However, the two Change views are more appropriate for obtaining an overview.

By employing the Show text changes feature you can display a list of the differences between the individual versions. You simultaneously see by whom and when the changes were made. A green bar in front of a paragraph means this this paragraph was added to the given version, a red bar shows that text was deleted. (According to this logic, changes are designated as deletions and additions to a paragraph.)

In contrast, the Show text with author allocation feature shows you who wrote which paragraph or at least who last changed the current version. This is achieved by highlighting the paragraphs in different colours; a legend above the text displays the authors’ colour allocation. In addition, small information buttons to the left of the paragraphs provide information on the author when indicated with the cursor or when clicked on.

Attention: Both Change views are paragraph-oriented, i.e. even when only a single word was changed, the entire paragraph is considered to have been changed and assigned accordingly.

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