Help:Rollback

On the user contributions page, admins and trusted users have the additional "rollback" links at lines which are the last edit made by anybody to that article. The rollback link is also shown on the diff page when viewing the difference between any version of the page and the most recent one. Clicking on the link reverts to the previous edit not authored by the last editor, with an automatic edit summary of "Reverted edits by X (talk) to last version by Y," which marks the edit as "minor." If you need rollback rights, please discuss about it with a bureaucrat.

If, between loading the user contributions page and pressing "rollback," someone else edits or rolls back the page, or if there was no previous editor, you will get an error message.

The rollback link on the diff page is somewhat misleading, because reversion is not necessarily to the old version shown (the diff page may show the combined result of edits including some by other editors, or only part of the edits the rollback button would revert). To see the changes the rollback button would revert, view the corresponding diff page.

Rollbacks should be used with caution and restraint, in part because they leave no explanation for the revert in the edit summary. Reverting a good-faith edit may therefore send the message that "I think your edit was no better than vandalism and doesn't deserve even the courtesy of an explanation." It is a slap in the face to a good-faith editor. If you use the rollback feature for anything other than vandalism or for reverting yourself, it's polite to leave an explanation on the article talk page, or on the talk page of the user whose edit(s) you reverted.

This page incorporates text from Wikimedia's Meta-Wiki.