Wikipedia:Sometimes patience is better
 | This is an essay on WP:Be bold and WP:Disruptive editing. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
Wikipedia encourages editors to be bold. Wikipedia also recognizes that sometimes edits are not bold, they are disruptive. This page will help you avoid making changes considered disruptive.
It is important to note that changes required by policies like WP:Biography of Living Persons or WP:Copyright infringement are not bold or disruptive editing. This page is not about such changes.
How easy is it to revert?
[edit]When bold editing, you must always consider that you may be wrong. Making a change to a single page via a single edit or series of edits is always easy to undo via the undo button, or editing the version prior to your edits and hitting publish (assuming no edits have been made in the interim).
Making similar changes to a series of articles is harder to undo. An editor might see changes on one article that you did and decide to undo it, but other articles might not get changed.
Edits which affect viability and accessibility
[edit]Some types edits like merging and blank and redirect make the page your editing hard to find. Doing edits like that to a group of articles means that an editor who finds one of the articles and restores it, will likely not be aware of the articles aware of any other articles you altered.
Uncertainty about the edit
[edit]If you are unsure if the edit follows consensus that it would be a good idea to try the talk page or help pages first. If you aren't sure why your edit is a good idea, you can't discuss it.