Help:Be bold

Be bold is an old Wikipedia rule-of-thumb to propel further development of a wiki. Thus if You feel uncomfortable with contents or appearance of a page and You develop an idea how to make text or page design better: Try it. Your change may be reverted, and then You can try to understand why Your change was unwanted. Did it go too far? Try it again with a more moderate change or write Your question or improvement idea into the talk page of the changed page.

The one who reverts a change should also think about wether or not the reason for the reversion is obvious (for example the reversion of a spam address insertion, or a moderate partial reversion to recover important details). Otherwise the one should also write the reason for the reversion into the talk page of the changed page.

If the change and reversion game goes into a second round, editor and reverter should use the user talk pages of each other to reach each other better with questions and arguments for and against the change or just to remind each other of further changes in the original page talk discussion. If the reverter is an experienced contributor or wiki admin he/she should be open-minded for new ideas, and each party should reduce the number of exchanged arguments to a minimum so that others can follow and enter discussion if necessary. It would be better to switch discussion early from arguments exchange to consent building if the suggested change proves to result from a realistic page-improving intention or can be developed from a totally free idea to a sound page inprovement.

Important hint for busy contributors: If You know that you made some valid major changes to a page, the last of these edits should not be marked as "small change" in the checkbox left below the editing window when You save the change. Thus the version can't go lost in database reorg actions of this wiki site's "bureaucrat". It's very useful for the project if many small changes are marked as such small change in the page histories. But sometimes it's good to have a "major change" in page history if a really improved article status is reached.

Important hint for bold contributors: Look into the page history before You make a big bold change. If there are only small changes in the near past, make a small change first and save that as "major change", i.e. an edit that should not be marked as "small change" in the checkbox left below the editing window when You save the change.

see also

• more about good practice in this wiki
• original Be Bold philosophy of Wikipedia