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What is a 'rollback' on Stack Exchange sites? I have seen this mentioned but I do not understand the term.
Please note: this question has been locked as it was used as a sandbox for performing rollbacks. If you want to try out a few rollbacks, do it here instead.
See also
- Why can people edit my posts? How does editing work? in the Help Center
A rollback reverts a post back to a previous version in the edit history. The rollback action itself then appears as the most recent item in the edit history.
A rollback also clears any spam or rude/abusive flags that have been set on a question. For example, if the post originally had two spam flags, was edited, received one more spam flag, then the edit was rolled back, the last spam flag will be cleared, leaving the first two.
Rolling back a post will also restore its content license (CC BY-SA 2.5, 3.0, or 4.0) to what it was at the time of the target revision.
You can find the rollback button in the revisions page:
If you don't have enough reputation to edit the post, you won't see the button. Also, there is no 5-minute grace period for rollbacks (i.e. any edits you make after the rollback will create a new revision, and not fold them into the rollback revision.)
Here's an example of what an edit history with a number of rollbacks looks like:
The "Rollback" button will not provide you an opportunity to specify a reason for rolling back. However, you can provide a reason for rolling back by using the "Edit" button instead, and specifying your reason in the edit summary field. Do note that you must not change anything in the post for it to be counted as a rollback - if you make any change, it will be treated as an edit instead.
Rollbacks performed when overriding an approved suggested edit will contain an automatic summary that the edit approval was overridden.
If you're a moderator, and you accidentally use the Rollback button instead of Edit, you can change the summary of the rollback revision to add a reason for rolling back.
If there is a pending suggested edit on a post at the time of the rollback, the suggestion will be automatically invalidated (cancelled). Such suggested edits will not count toward automatic edit bans, much like automatic rejections due to edit conflicts, except the Community user will not be involved in the review. Such reviews show as "no longer reviewable" in the edit item itself, as "rejected edits" in the user activity summary, and as "invalidated" in the post timeline:
Rollbacks will not affect previous approved suggested edits: using the "Rollback" button in the revision history will only reverse the edit and take no other action, and is useful if a suggested edit is not useful but was made in good faith. Only those rollbacks which are performed using the suggested edit override button - and which are specifically noted as "Edit approval overridden" - will deduct the earned reputation and rewrite the edit as a rejected edit for the purposes of edit bans.
But that doesn't happen if you rollback your own question. But it can surely prevent that guy from accumulating more flags and stop his loss of 100 rep. But maybe it's there to make sure the OP learns that offense isn't tolerated here.
Jul 19, 2017 at 14:00
I have edited your question. There is now a "rollback" option which you can press to revert the changes I made back to the original. That is the meaning of the term "rollback" as it is used on Stack Overflow and sister sites.
If you want to leave a comment with the rollback, then click the date next to "edited" to show the revision history, and next use the "edit" link of a specific old revision instead. Then, when not changing anything but simply only typing a comment in the "Edit Summary", you're also rolling back when saving.
Once a post has been edited, it could be rolled back by anyone with edit permissions for that post to a previous revision. The rollback button appears on the edit page after an initial edit has been made. Note this excludes edits that do not cause a revision history (edits by the OP made within the 5-minute grace period).
Assuming that you do want to get the badge and you always (very unlikely) ask questions that never need to be edited (and if they are, never need to be rolled back). You can get this badge by editing your post and then rolling back to the first revision and you will get your badge.
jcsanyi's answer isn't correct in saying it's not enough to do that, I've tested it and it is. Although StackExchange probably should implement it to prevent people from doing this just to get the badge.
It just takes a couple of minutes before the badge is given to you (like all the badges). So don't constantly rollback until you get it.
Note that it looks like it's not enough to edit the post and just select an earlier revision in the dropdown at the top. That will effectively set the content back to what it was earlier, but it doesn't actually count as a rollback - it doesn't count towards the Cleanup badge, and it (presumably) doesn't clear any flags.