Help:Revert a page

You may wish to revert an article to an earlier version, perhaps because it has been vandalized or material has been added or removed inappropriately.

Reversion

To revert to an earlier version:

Go to the page, click on "Page history" at the bottom, and click on the time and date of the earlier version you want to revert to. It will not work if you click on 'cur' or 'last'.
Then when that page comes up, you'll see something like "(Revision as of 23:19 Aug 15, 2002)" below the title, rather than "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia".
Verify that you've selected the correct version, and click to edit the page, as you would normally.
You'll get a warning, above the edit box, about editing an out-of-date revision.
Ignore the warning and save the page. Be sure to add the word "revert" to the edit summary. It is common practice to mention the version of the page that you're reverting back to in the description as well.

In general a revert is the advised action to deal with vandalism. It is not the advised action when dealing with edits that were made in good faith - indeed, we strongly recommend against it. Instead, have a look at our advice on staying cool when the editing gets hot.

Reverts and edit conflicts

Reverts never cause an edit conflict – if between you pressing edit, and then pressing post, someone else edits the page, their edits will be silently overwritten (though still in the page history). Beware of reverting high-traffic pages! Conversely, if it looks like someone has deleted your edits, consider if it's more likely that it's one of these unfortunate reversion conflicts.

Admin-only "rollback" link

On the User Contributions page a sysop has additional "rollback" links at lines which are also marked "top", i.e. the lines regarding edits of articles 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 the most recent version of a page and the last version by an author other than the one of the most current version.

Clicking on the link reverts to the last edit not authored by the user concerned, with automatic edit summary "Reverted edits by X to last version by Y".

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'll get an error message.

The feature is especially useful in the case of a known vandal, whose edits one need not check anymore before reverting them.

bot rollback

In cases of flood vandalism, sysops may choose to hide vandalism from recent changes. To do this, add &bot=1 to the end of the url used to access a user's contributions. For example, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=SomePersistentVandal&bot=1.

When the rollback links on the contributions list are clicked, the revert, and the original edit that you are reverting will both be hidden from the default Recentchanges display (by using the marker originally added to keep massive bot edits from flooding recentchanges, hence the "bot"). This means that they will be hidden from recent changes unless you click the "bots" link to set hidebots=0. The edits are not hidden from contributions lists, page histories or watchlists. The edits remain in the database and are not removed, but they no longer flood Recentchanges. The aim of this feature is to reduce the annoyance factor of a flood vandal with relatively little effort. This should not be used for reverting a change you just don't like, but is meant only for massive floods of simple vandalism.

Revert wars considered harmful (the three revert guideline)

One of Wikipedia's guidelines:

Never revert the same article more than three times in the same day.

If the edit really needs reverting that much, somebody else will probably do it – and that will serve the vital purpose of showing that the community at large is in agreement over which of two competing versions is correct. If you like, chat with other Wikipedians whom you respect, and ask them if they could take a look. If you and the person you've asked to help have both needed to revert three times, then it is probably time to ask for the page to be protected.

"Reversion wars" between two competing individuals are against Wikipedia's spirit, and reflect badly on both participants. Instead of performing a straight revert, look for ways to compromise, or alternate ways of saying the same thing - while such edits take more time and thought than another unthinking revert, they are far more likely to result in a mutually satisfactory article. In the case of newcomers who are genuinely making poor edits, being reverted by two or more people demonstrates that the reversions are not a one man crusade, but something closer to a consensus.

High-frequency reversion wars make the version history less useful, make it hard for other people to contribute, and flood recent changes, watchlists, etc. Low-frequency reversion wars do not cause the community as many problems (though they still cause some).

This principle could be compared to the Ko rule in Go (one cannot repeat positions), or chess's rule that if a position is repeated three times then the game can end in a draw.

Many users recommend spacing out your reverts to one per day. Benefits are:

You run no risk of being temp-banned following a quickpoll.
The other person might see the light of reason.
You might realize that the other person was right!
Others can easily step in and try to help.

Enforcement

Currently this rule is enforced by:

Educating users who may not be aware of good Wikipedia practice in the matter.
Peer pressure and leadership by example.
Where pages are protected due to revert wars, sysops may protect pages on the version disliked by those who have engaged in excessive reverts. This is believed by some to be a recent change to the protection policy. The sysop also has the option to protect the current version, thereby maintaining a sense of neutrality.
In extreme cases, investigation by the arbitration committee, which may lead to any number of responses.
Wikipedia:Quickpolls, a system of 24 hour blocks on offenders, which is undergoing a trial period.

For the purposes of enforcement, some have taken the guideline to mean four reverts separated by less than 24 hours. Others take "day" to mean a UTC day. It could also be taken to mean a day in a timezone other than UTC (such as that of the person reverting), or even the period between one episode of sleeping and the next. As a guideline we're more interested in promoting good practice and respect for others. "Sleep on it" is always good advice, and counting the hours until your next "legal" revert is probably a sign that you've got the wrong end of the stick.