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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 post is not a sandbox for performing rollbacks. Please do not perform rollbacks on this post without valid reason. 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.
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:
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.
– Unitato says Reinstate Monica
Jul 19 '17 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.
