Similar to the {{Diff}} template, this template is intended to be useful for creating links to "diffs"; that is, links to pages that show the differences between two versions of a wiki page. The major difference is that {{Diff}} is intended to show two versions of the same page, and this creates a link to Special:ComparePages to show one version of two different pages.

Every version of a page has a revision ID, which you can find from the history of the page by looking at the link for the timestamp, which is of the form:

http[s]://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=SomePageName&oldid=442212827

The number after oldid= is the revision ID.

Given a page name and one or two revision IDs, you can construct links to several types of diffs.

{{Compare pages|page/oldid for page 1|page/oldid for page 2}}
  • page – The title of the page.
  • oldid – The revision ID onto which the diff is generated.

All parameters are required. Omitting parameters will return an error.

Code Output
{{Compare pages|Foo|Bar}} compare Foo to Bar

This is the form that would be used most often.

{{Compare pages|Foo}} Two pages are needed to compare.
{{Compare pages||Bar}} Two pages are needed to compare.