Wikipedia:Be bold

Don't be upset if your bold edits get reverted. The early advocate of trial and error followed by observation to gain knowledge, Francis Bacon, said, "For if absurdity be the subject of laughter, doubt you not but great boldness is seldom without some absurdity." Instead of getting upset, read and , and be bold again, but after a reversion of a bold edit, you might want to be bold in an edit on the talk pages so as not to start an edit war. Think about it this way: if you don't find one of your edits being reverted now and then, perhaps you're not being bold enough.

Being bold is not an excuse to, even temporarily, violate the policy on material about living persons.

Often it is easier to see that something is not right rather than to know exactly what would be right. We do not require that everyone be bold. After all, commenting that something in an article is incorrect can be the first step to getting it fixed. It is true, though, that problems are more certain to be fixed, and will probably be fixed faster, if you are bold enough to do it yourself.

Problems may arise for a variety of reasons in different contexts in non-article namespaces. These problems should be taken into account in deciding whether to be bold, and how bold to be.

The admonition "but please be careful" is especially important in relation to policies and guidelines, where key parts may be phrased in a particular way to reflect a very hard-won, knife-edge consensus – which may not be obvious to those unfamiliar with the background. In these cases, it is also often better to discuss potential changes first. However, spelling and grammatical errors can and should be fixed as soon as they are noticed.

Because of these concerns, many heavily used templates are indefinitely protected from editing. Before editing templates, consider proposing any changes on the associated talk pages and announcing the proposed change on pages of appropriate . Templates often have associated sandbox and testcases pages; respectively these are a place for the proposed modified template, and a place where the proposal may be trialed in comparison with the existing version.

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