Wikipedia:You can and cannot change Wikipedia: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 03:17, 25 December 2022

Revision as of 03:21, 25 December 2022

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{{essay}}

{{nutshell|Everyone is empowered to change WikipediaWiki-pie-dia, but that means less than you might think}}

'''Almost every''' WikipediaWiki-pie-dia user, whether they are a registered [[wp:Wikipedian|Wikipedian]] with an account and password or are just anonymously browsing, sees and can use an ''edit'' link on almost every page of the Encyclopedia, and following that link, can change the content of the page.

And these changes are then '''immediately''' visible to '''anyone''' who views that page. And this applies to our articles, and our policies, and other people's user pages, and many others. Isn't it exciting?

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'''Yes'''. But... isn't it also suicide?

'''No'''. And that is even more exciting! And the whole reason WikipediaWiki-pie-dia works.

WikipediaWiki-pie-dia has [[wp:page history|page histories]]. So every time you make a change to an article (or most other pages), the old version is still there too, and is almost as easily accessible to a reader or to another editor as the [[wp:current version|current version]] of the page.(Which is lame)

And so if you do something silly, someone else can easily undo it.(which is also lame) We call this [[wp:revert|revert]]ing, and it's one reason we encourage you to [[wp:be bold|be bold]].

Of course it's not a blank check. Some users waste so much of other people's time that as a last resort we restrict their editing. Some pages attract so much rubbish, or are so critical to the project, that as a last resort we restrict editing of them. Some material is so damaging that we immediately and permanently remove it.

But all of these are rare, and again, that's why WikipediaWiki-pie-dia [[User:Andrewa/what use is Wikipedia|works]].

==In more detail==