UUWiki:How to revert a page to an earlier version

Reversion

To revert to an earlier version:

• Go to the page, click on "history" at the top ("Page history" in some skins), and click on the time and date of the earlier version you want to revert to. It will not work if you click on 'cur' or 'last'.
• Then when that page comes up, you'll see something like "(Revision as of 23:19 Aug 15, 2002)" below the title, rather than the normal text.
• Verify that you've selected the correct version, and click to edit the page, as you would normally.
• You'll get a warning, above the edit box, about editing an out-of-date revision.
• Ignore the warning and save the page. Be sure to add the word "revert" to the edit summary. Some Wikipedians abbreviate this to "rv". It is common practice to mention the version of the page that you're reverting back to in the description as well.

A revert is the advised reaction to deal with vandalism. Where you just think an older version of a page is better than the current version, a revert is sometimes appropriate. More often, though, it's better to write a third version that takes the best bits of the other two, and combines them to get the best of both worlds.

Note that reverts are not appropriate if a newer version is no better than the older version. You should save reverts for cases where the new version is actively worse.

Regardless, we strongly recommend against heated revert wars. Instead, have a look at our advice on staying cool when the editing gets hot.

Reverts and edit conflicts

Reverts never cause an edit conflict – if between your pressing edit, and then pressing post, someone else edits the page, their edits will be silently overwritten (though still in the page history). Beware of reverting high-traffic pages! Conversely, if it looks like someone has deleted your edits, consider if it's more likely that it's one of these unfortunate reversion conflicts.