Wikipedia talk:Rollback

This project page does not require a rating on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Wikipedia Help Mid‑importance This page is within the scope of the Wikipedia Help Project, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's help documentation for readers and contributors. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks. To browse help related resources see the Help Menu or Help Directory. Or ask for help on your talk page and a volunteer will visit you there.Wikipedia HelpWikipedia:Help ProjectTemplate:Wikipedia Help ProjectHelp Mid This page has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Archives

Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4

February 2015 RfC on granting of the Rollback permission (Archive A)

This page has archives. Sections older than 365 days may be auto-archived by Lowercase sigmabot III if there are more than 4.

This section is pinned and will not be automatically archived.

I read the project page and I still don't understand, how exactly Twinkle's rollback & restore version is any less powerful than Rollback. I came here to request this right, but I'm not even sure if I really get anything I can't already do. It's so easy and convenient to be able to leave custom summaries, or be able to choose one specific revision to restore rather than the tool choosing a revision itself, which may itself be problematic. ---CX Zoom(^he/_him) (^{let's talk}|_contribs) 16:36, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Your mileage may vary. I use both, as well as popups and manual reverting sometimes, but I use rollback by far the most. Rollback is quicker, more efficient, and more reliable, as everything is done on the servers, whereas Twinkle relies on JavaScript in your browser. I'm not sure, but I guess Twinkle might involve fetching the old content, then re-uploading it? From the client point of view, rollback involves a simple HTTP request. Rollback can sometimes work better when the revert is dispatched to a background tab, if browser tabs need to have focus to run JS effectively. Rollback also doesn't add pages to your watchlist, if that's a setting you have enabled. It doesn't, by default, have all the things you like about Twinkle, but it gets the job done most efficiently when applied correctly. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 17:25, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

In terms of functionality, the Twinkle rollback button is effectively identical to the software rollback. The software rollback may be slightly faster because of the reasons zzuuzz mentioned, but for everyday purposes, the Twinkle rollback button can stand in the place of the software rollback almost completely. In my view, the primary reason we continue to gate rollback behind WP:PERM is because certain fast-reversion software like Huggle require the rollback permission, and we want to check whether editors are ready to use such software before they begin using it. Mz7 (talk) 20:17, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

Without having seen this thread, I recently made some changes to the page that include details on the differences between Twinkle rollback and true rollback. I will say, re Mz7, I've had rollback for 9+1⁄2 years, have never touched Huggle, and would still hate to ever part with the permission. The speed increase does add up—when I have to use Twinkle rollback on other wikis it rather frustrates me—but most importantly the ability to do mass rollbacks really is a huge time-saver when dealing with fast vandals or cleaning up after sockpuppets. -- Tamzin (she/they) 20:22, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

Right, my point was more that, if it weren't for the Huggle/fast-reversion angle to the permission, there isn't that big a reason in my mind to simply make the rollback permission available to all autoconfirmed users, just as Twinkle rollback is. Mz7 (talk) 21:13, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

@Mz7: Hmm. When combined with the right scripts, like User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/massRollback.js, it has a decent attack potential. Some wikis do hand rollback out automatically, but usually it's more like extendedconfirmed here. dewiki, for instance, does it at 60 days + 300 mainspace edits. But I mean, I take your point. If you ask me, though, we should be moving in the opposite direction. We have too many non-rollbacker recent change patrollers using Twinkle rollback to revert every IP they see; I'd rather we made it that to use any pseudo-rollback tool you need to be a rollbacker. -- Tamzin (she/they) 21:35, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

I noticed that the “Rollback” button doesn’t always show in View History (Twinkle’s Rollback button). I have this habit of going back to View History after reviewing edits, because I used to use Undo (I didn’t start using Twinkle yet at that time). Maybe a reason for someone to request for Rollback user rights. Myrealnamm (💬talk · ✏️contribs) at 20:34, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Is there a way to avoid accidentally clicking "rollback" on the Wikipedia:Recent changes page on a mobile phone? JacktheBrown (talk) 22:11, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) § Adding checkuser-temporary-account to rollbackers and NPP folks. Sohom (talk) 19:04, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

For me, the rollback example looks different from the example, and is different for each thing. For example, on page histories it looks like (rollback: n edits | undo | thank), in the watchlist it is (rollback | thank), on user contribution pages it looks like (rollback: 1 edit | thank), on diffs it is Example (talk | contribs) , and on Special:RecentChanges it is (rollback | thank). --pro-anti-air (talk) 17:49, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

None of these look like the example in the page. --pro-anti-air (talk) 17:50, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

WP:Rollback#When to use rollback #1 says To revert obvious vandalism and other edits where the reason for reverting is absolutely clear (emphasis mine).

If it was obvious vandalism or other edits, I would understand that it would cover all possible cases where the edit was lesser than vandalism, but not actually vandalism, probably some (but not all) cases detailed under WP:NOTVANDALISM. Or it would cover cases that are not obvious but Subtle vandalism, but still vandalism.

The usage of "and" and lack of a comma after "vandalism" seems to indicate the "other edits" are related to vandalism, but what kind of edits do we have that need to be reverted, and are higher than vandalism? The "other edits" also don't stand for non-obvious or subtle vandalism, because what kind of vandalism is not obvious when "the reason for reverting is absolutely clear"?

This text, more than 15 years old, was added by a now-retired editor, who boldly re-wrote this Rollback page over several edits on a single day. The verbose text that he converted to this point#1 was rollback should only be used for reverts that are self-explanatory – such as removing obvious vandalism;, and the other segments went to other bullet points. So I would say #1 was an improper re-write.

Suggest rewritng as:

But if it was me re-writing the page in 2010, my #1 and the heading before the bullets would have read:

with no provision for whatever the "other edits" is being interpreted currently. Jay 💬 19:13, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

MediaWiki rollback allows an editor to quickly revert all edits by a single editor, either in an article or across multiple articles. About 7,000 non-admins have this user right (that's accounts with the MediaWiki rollback user right, not people who use Twinkle or other tools). A quick query for rollbackers indicates that about 3,000 non-admin accounts with the rollback user right (40% of them!) have not edited for at least three years. (Admins lose this user right at 12 months of inactivity, because it's part of the sysop set; therefore, there are no admins that have been inactive for 3 years but still have the user right.)

Earlier this year, we agreed on an activity requirement for Wikipedia:Autopatrolled accounts, that the user right should be removed after three years, because standards change over time and there's always a risk of an account getting hacked.

I'd like to propose the same thing here: No edits for 3 years = we remove the MediaWiki rollback user right. I don't think it will be particularly disruptive, since these editors are really not likely to restart editing and need MediaWiki rollback, especially since tools like Twinkle can do similar things.

What do you think? Is there anything I've missed, that makes you think this is the wrong thing to do? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:28, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

I don't see anything like the same sort of risks with rollbacker as there are with autopatrolled, and especially not the sort of risks that get mitigated with time-based removal. Compromising an autopatroller's account without the owner ever noticing it lets you place ads directly into the encyclopedia and Google while completely evading the first two lines of defense against such (AFC and NPP). Compromising a rollbacker's account without the owner ever noticing it lets you... undo edits faster. And if someone starts rollbacking a whole bunch of edits incorrectly, they're going to end up blocked and their rollbacks rolledback. —Cryptic 02:50, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

I agree that this isn't as important. But I still think that it might be worth doing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:16, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

It would be fine if MediaWiki did this automatically but manually checking output from a bot, notifying people, then removing rights would involve a lot of work. That could only be justified if evidence of actual benefits were available. That still applies even if the only step was removing rights from a bot-generated list. Johnuniq (talk) 04:39, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

There's one undeniable benefit: We'll have a more accurate picture of how many (plausibly) active editors hold the user right. We currently claim almost 7K folks with this user right, but in reality it's not even 4K – and that's using a very generous definition of "active". Of course, anyone might decide this isn't a significant benefit, but it is a benefit.

As usual, if nobody is willing to do the work, then it won't happen. But we removed autopatrolled from almost half as many accounts without any of the volunteers saying it was too much work, so I don't think that concern should block the idea. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:29, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Hi. This is not hot-tempered... But I'd like if any experienced Rollbacker or Administrator or anyone may warn the user Somepinkdude? He's got like three warnings in his five months on here, all for the same reason which kind of bothered me today. May anyone advise him (once again) against hasty tagging, hasty and uncommon sense rollbacks? Thanks. CoryGlee (talk) 03:26, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

I don't know about the other issues you mentioned (I don't see any complaints about rollback), but it was correct that your edit was quickly reverted with rollback. Your correction a short time later shows that you intended to write "Notable people", but reverting "Notorious people" was good. Stuff happens! Johnuniq (talk) 04:34, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

well... yeah... stuff happens... nothing new under the Sun, even more so on WP :-) Schöne Woche für dich. CoryGlee (talk) 23:25, 14 October 2025 (UTC)