Changes are listed with the most recent first; if there have been more than 50 changes for the page, the changes are grouped in chunks of 50 (or another value that you choose). You can view older changes by navigating to older chunks.
Each change in the list has the following information associated with it:
- Date and time of the change
- Name of the user who made the change, or IP address if changed by an anonymous user
- Summary of the change, if any
- Whether or not it's a minor change ("m" in bold)
The timestamp of the change is linked to a copy of the page as it was after the change was made. The name of the user is linked to their user page.
There are also two difference links for each change. The cur link shows the difference between the contents of the page at the time stated and its current contents. The prev link shows the difference between the contents of that version of the page and the contents of the previous version of the page (usually the one current just before it was changed, but page merges and revision deletions may confuse this).
You can customize the way the Page history page works using the Preferences page.
The page history is useful for reviewing the changes that have been made to a page; it is also used to revert a page to a previous version.