Wikipedia:How to revert a page to an earlier version

Wikipedia:Editing FAQ>How to revert a page to an earlier version (short version: wikipedia:revert)

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You may wish to revert an article to an earlier version, perhaps because it has been vandalised 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• You'll get a warning, above the edit box, about editing an out-of-date revision.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

The opposite of reverting is reinstating, restoring, or unreverting. But everyone knows it ought to be verting...

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.

Revert wars considered harmful

Wikipedia strongly advises all its users to never revert the same article more than twice a day. If the edit really needs reverting that much, somebody else will 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 to other Wikipedians, who you respect, and ask them if they could take a look.

"Reversion wars" between two competing individuals are uncool, 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 brainless revert, they are far more likely to result in a mutually satisfactory article.

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

If, between loading the User Contributions page and pressing "rollback" someone else has edited or rolled back the page already, one gets the message "Rollback failed" with explanation.

If the user concerned has created the page and been the only editor, even though a rollback link appears, clicking it gives the message "Cannot revert edit; last contributor is only author of this article."

This feature can not be used when the last two edits were by the same user, and one wants to revert the last one only.

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