Help talk:Reverting

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Admin only feature?[edit]

I am confused by this page. I think reverting is something only moderators can do, not ordinary users. Or am I mistaken? Yes of course I can re-edit an old version but that is not the sme thing as reverting as it upsets the history Jcwf 21:52, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Deleting images[edit]

How do you delete an image you've uploaded?- Dorkules The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.30.90.51 (talk • contribs) 18:17, 25 January 2007.

I have no idea for wikicommons, but, wouldn't you do IfD(Or whatever the equivalent of AfD is for images), on that wiki?

Too Wikipedia-centric[edit]

This page, which is being copied to other projects' Help: namespace, is far too Wikipedia-centric. In fact, it's very en:Wikipedia-centric, making references to pages not found on sister projects or even other-language WPs that are broken for every single project but en:WP. Could someone with a solid understanding of cross-project parameterization comb through this thing and fix the problems while leaving the helpful en:WP links? (We also need to test those remaining links, as some of them are currently broken even for en:WP.) Thanks. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 02:32, 29 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to edit the page. Wikipedia-specific parts belong in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Ph:Reverting . You can use external link style.--Patrick 09:16, 29 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I wish I could. I can't keep up with critical Wikiquote maintenance, and I've got some tasks backlogged as much as a year. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 05:55, 30 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Just a note supporting this. I recently manual updated the en wp page and had a bunch of redlinks pop up, an annoying number of which were "wikipedia:wikipedia:". If someone is linking to a page found only on English Wikipedia, please add it to w:Template:Ph:Reverting, which is currently blanked for being wildly out of date and repetitive with w:Help:Reverting. - BanyanTree 14:21, 30 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why no rollback[edit]

Can someone explain why the rollback button is not available to "mere mortal" users, considering that it performs no action not available (or even particularly inconvenient) to normal users? --(en:Random832)68.58.124.83 09:40, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That could be easily abused by vandals and such, because reverts are always minor edits and are too easy to perform with the button. Besides, it should be used only for reverting obvious vandalism, which is done by admins most of the time (or bots, on enwiki). — Timichal 09:54, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Lots of people besides admins revert vandalism. For an easy, sort-of one-click revert, use Popups, which is available to non-admins. See wikipedia:en:Wikipedia:Popups.
The the new "undo" button seems equivalent to the admin rollback. Is that impression correct? Should this page explain the undo button? 75.21.130.211 01:56, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Redundant and/or extraneous information.[edit]

I don't find much of the advice on this help page very helpful. In particular, I think the admonition "Don't just remove the edit; improve it" is confusing. In many cases, removal is the best improvement possible.

What about redundant information? Is it OK to remove redundancies? Or ought I "improve" them by searching for synonyms (creating circumlocutions as often as not)? How about extraneous information? If an article is logically structured, in sections, and another editor insists on presenting the existing information in a jumbled and chaotic fashion, isn't removal better than "improvement"?

As an author and an editor, I always thought that writing exists for the benefit of the reader. Apparently I was wrong, gentle reader. These instructions make it clear that writing exists for the benefit of the editors. DavidCBryant 11:54, 5 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Reverting multiple edits[edit]

In order to undo three vandalistic edits, I did undo 3 times. I'm glad that undo helped make it easier, but is it possible (without popups, javascript or admin super-powers) to do it with just one undo? Andjam 00:56, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In such cases, it's normally far easier and quicker to simply revert to the pre-vandalism version and manually add in the good edit. - BanyanTree 00:28, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Edit summary instructions confusing[edit]

Under the "How to revert" title, the edit summary instructions state:

The clickable links are created by entering [[User:Username|Username]] (replacing Username with the real IP address or Registered user, for logged-in users).

Now that's a bit hard to grasp on the first glance. A couple of practical examples would be nice. -- Akaihola 05:55, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ability to change the edit summary[edit]

(Copied from a en:WP:VPT posting of 18 November:)

The default rollback summary can be changed on a case-by-case bases. If someone takes the rollback url and appends &summary= followed by the edit summary, that is used instead of the default rollback edit summary.

John Broughton 20:28, 4 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Copy edit needed[edit]

I'm going to copy edit this at some point, because parts of the current version make no sense in English e.g.

"Do not simply revert changes that are made as part of a dispute. A revert on the basis of a factual dispute is inappropriate unless, and only unless, you as an editor possess firm, substantive, and objective proof to the contrary. Mere disagreement is not such proof."

This is meaningless, and there's no such expression as "unless and only unless." It's also false to say that people shouldn't revert as a part of a dispute. They do all the time, and these guidelines are supposed to be descriptive. SlimVirgin (talk) 01:08, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I happened to look at the page shortly before your copy edit, and felt that it went too far in discouraging reverting (though actually, there's very, very little edit warring at Wikisource, my home project). In particular, I didn't like the implication that an edit that lowers the overall quality of the page should be left in place, so I'm glad that's gone. Cowardly Lion 23:43, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Do these pages centre too much on Wikipedia?[edit]

How Wikipedia-centred are pages such as this supposed to be? I actually came to some of these pages through following links at Wikisource, and I find it a bit strange to be reading so much that seems to be written for Wikipedia. I've no problem with a section for and explanation of the three-revert rule (although I don't think most projects have that), but some of the actual instructions on reverting seemed to be written for Wikipedia users. An example, from the "Manual method" section, was this:

  • Then when that page comes up, you'll see something like "(Revision as of 22:19 Aug 15, 2002)" below the title and beneath "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia".

On Wikisource, we obviously don't have "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" when looking at an old version, but we don't have "From Wikisource, the free library" either. We have nothing there. I changed that sentence.

Another example is in the "Rollback" section, where it says that rollback will

On Wikisource, rollback's edit summary is "Reverted changes" etc., not "edits".

I don't want to remove too many of these kind of things without getting some other views first. I do realize that Wikipedia has far more editors than Wikisource, so I accept that most of the people who follow a link and read these instruction pages here actually arrive from Wikipedia. Cowardly Lion 00:13, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Making it general is fine. Wikis can use a copy of this page and add wiki-specific info to the copy.--Patrick (talk) 01:01, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I'm trying to make it a bit more general. Cowardly Lion 21:51, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reverting vandalism manually[edit]

I've modified the section where it seemed to imply that in the case of vandalism, even if you're reverting manually without undo or rollback or any tool that will fill in an automatic edit summary for you, you should take the time to fill in the username or IP of the person whose edit you're reverting, and also of the person two whose version you are restoring the page. If a page has been vandalized badly, I don't think one should waste any extra time: the main priority should be to get it back to the last good version quickly. Cowardly Lion 21:51, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Summary of automatic undo[edit]

Currently, the automatic edit summary for undo says:

(Undid revision 168542601 by 122.161.96.176 (talk))

This has left me (not to much involved in those matters) surprised, when as admin "undid" a revision from 9 months ago. For me, "undo" kind of implies a return to the immediately preceding version. I therefore would like to suggest that the automatic edit summary for "distant undo" be changed to sth like

(Undid revision $BAD_EDIT by $BAD_IP (talk) from $BAD_DATE, preserving further constructive edits until $RECENTGOODVERSION by $GOOD_IP from $ GOOD_DATE.) Jasy jatere

Partial usage of Undo edit summary for non-vandalism edits[edit]

The undo edit summary has sometimes been used like this 'Undid revision 00000000 by 127.0.0.1 Such a claim requires a source.' On some projects there is a message to use a non-default summary if it is not vandalism, but then they do the above for the last edit on a page. It is much better to use 'revert, such a claim requires a source'. May we add that to this page? Clark89 19:33, 27 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How do I get Rollback?[edit]

How do get Rollback? TurboGolf 17:02, 11 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you have to have a history of accurate reverting of vandalism. Some projects grant rollback at a "Requests for rights" or "Requests for permissions" page, while others do not grant non-administrative rollback at all. Inferno, Lord of Penguins 21:45, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Mass rollback in another wiki[edit]

Hi, does anyone know why mass rollback isn't working at my wiki? see http://en.kommynist.ru/User:XXPowerMexicoXx/mass_rollback.js (here's the original: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:John254/mass_rollback.js ) , do I have to install an extension or something for it to work? thanks a lot --XXPowerMexicoXx 02:44, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Twinkle[edit]

Why can anyone use twinkle while not everyone can use rollback? --Jamcad01 (talk) 07:07, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Need help importing template for reverting test edit[edit]

Hello, could someone help me import the template {{subst:welcometest}} to chy:Wikipedia? Djembayz (talk) 04:34, 22 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A confirmation prompt for rollbacks[edit]

The confirmation prompt works inline, like the thanks confirmation.
You can activate the prompt in your preferences, if you want to.
On dewiki, you can deactivate it in your settings.

Hello, in case you want to add it to Help:Reverting#Rollback, here is some information about a feature from Wikimedia Germany’s Technical Wishes team, which was deployed yesterday:

There is a new option in your user preferences: If you want to, you can add a confirmation prompt to your rollback links. Users from German Wikipedia have asked for this, because quite a lot of people on dewiki accidentally click on the rollback link, e.g. when they want to thank someone. But there are also people in other wikis who use various methods to prevent themselves from accidentally rolling back.

The confirmation prompt works inline, like the thanks notification. It’s switched off by default, but you can turn it on individually if you want to (and have rollback rights). This is the default setting for all wikis except German Wikipedia, where the confirmation prompt will be activated as a default. On dewiki, users who want to rollback quickly can turn it off individually in their user settings.

Please see the project page for more information about this wish, its background and timeline. Feedback is always welcome on the central feedback page.

Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 07:59, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 27 August 2020[edit]

I'm a Google Summer of Code intern in Wikimedia working on a project for marking manual reverts and reverted edits with appropriate change tags. I would like to describe the new features in the user manual properly and I would normally do that on mediawiki.org, but it seems that this particular help page wasn't migrated there yet.

I have no idea why I'm not in the autoconfirmed user group, I have this account since a few years. Ostrzyciel (talk) 13:41, 27 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The whole series of pages don't seem to have been moved. Comment about account status left on your user page.  — billinghurst sDrewth 04:07, 28 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]