It’s Wikipedia. Make the change you want to see in the page.

With respect, that is naive. To demonstrate, create a new account and go ahead and make that change. It will be reverted. Wikipedia is not the democratic free-for-all it once was.

If you do perform that experiment and I am wrong, please come back and let us know.

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TuringTest 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Wikipedia is and has always been a wiki; reverting bad or controversial edits has always been expected from day one.

Also Wikipedia has developed an editorial line of its own, so it's normal that edits that go against the line will be put in question; if that happens to you, you're expected to collaborate in the talk pages to express your intent for the changes, and possibly get recommendations on how to tweak it so that it sticks.

It also happens that most of contributions by first timers are indistinguishable from vandalism or spam; those are so obvious that an automated bot is able to recognize them and revert them without human supervision, with a very high success rate.

However if those first contributions are genuinely useful to the encyclopedia, such as adding high quality references for an unverified claim, correcting typos, or removing obvious vandalism that slipped through the cracks, it's much more likely that the edits will stay; go ahead and try that experiment and tell us how it went.

	▲	Timwi 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> reverting bad or controversial edits has always been expected from day one. How charming of you to think that the well-meaning contributor is going to happily smile and agree with you when you tell them that their well-meaning contributions are bad.
	▲	nephihaha 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		There are plenty of "bad and controversial edits" on Wikipedia, just some are more acceptable than others. Wikipedia is an oligarchy.

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ejolto 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I’m here to let you know you are wrong.

I made an anonymous edit to the Wikipedia page of one of Hemingways short stories three years ago, and my edit is still there.

	▲	nephihaha 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You were lucky that you could edit in the first place. Most anonymous editors are blocked before they make an edit due to shared IPs.

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throw-qqqqq 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I’ve made several edits to wiki-pages without even having an account. A few got reverted, most stayed.

Some pages/topics are more open to changes than others, that much is true.

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nephihaha 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"It’s Wikipedia. Make the change you want to see in the page."

If it allows you to edit it in the first place or isn't reverted within five minutes.

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y-curious 4 hours ago | parent [-]

They have strict rules, but I’ve had no issues editing articles after my first error. It’s certainly not like posting an answer on Stack Overflow, where you will be downvoted and flamed for a correct-but-suboptimal answer.

	▲	nephihaha an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Most of the time when I try to edit anything, I get a message telling me I am blocked. I am never blocked because of anything I have done but because my shared IP is. It is not something "anyone can edit" as they claim. I do not wish to have a named account, because I had to leave one after an admin started stalking me on it. I never wanted my Wikipedia editing to be about me, but about the content.
	▲	Timwi 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I suppose it's a matter of perspective which one you find worse: getting flamed for trying to contribute, or just having your contributions erased.