Wikipedia:Rollback

This page documents an English Wikipedia behavioral guideline. Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply. Substantive edits to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on this guideline's talk page.

Shortcuts WP:RBK WP:ROLLBACK WP:ROLL

Warning: You take full responsibility for any action you perform using Rollback. You must read and understand Wikipedia policies and use this tool within these policies, otherwise you risk losing access to the tool or even being blocked from editing.

The MediaWiki rollback user right provides users with a button that will revert, with a single click, the last edit to a given page, along with any consecutive previous edits made by the same editor to that page. It is used to undo problematic edits such as vandalism. Some counter-vandalism tools also require the user to possess the rollback user right to use the tool.

An editor with rollback user rights will see a button rollback n edits next to relevant revisions on pages such as their watchlist, on user contributions pages (including their own), and on the edit history of pages.

MediaWiki rollback is enabled and available to all administrators automatically and can be given to other users upon request, subject to the approval of an administrator. A user who has been assigned this right explicitly is called a rollbacker. There are currently 848 administrators and 6,876 rollbackers (7,724 total; however, most of these accounts haven't edited for years), not including global rollbackers and stewards who have been assigned the right across all Wikimedia projects.

Where the following text refers to MediaWiki rollback, it means the form of rollback built in to the MediaWiki editing software. MediaWiki rollback may only be used in certain situations. As with any other tool, editors who misuse MediaWiki rollback (for example, by using it to make unexplained reversions of good-faith edits in situations where an explanatory edit summary or talk page note would normally be expected) may have their rollback rights removed. Since rollback is part of the core administrator tools, theoretically an admin could be stripped of their administrative privileges entirely to remove those tools.