Reviewing Content Changes: A General Plan of Action
If youâre an experienced Wikipedia editor, you probably have a pretty good idea of what you shouldnât do when editing, and you can identify problems in othersâ edits without going through a step-by-step review. While youâre still gaining experience, however, a systematic approach is a good way to figure out what not to do yourself, what you should revert and what you shouldnât, and how to handle edits by others that arenât bad enough to revert but arenât good enough to stay as is.
The approach laid out in the following sections will help you improve articles and reduce the number of content disputes youâre in. For example, policy violations come first, since theyâre easy to define and no one disputes the need to revert them. Then youâll turn to more subtle points like sourcing and wording.
Policy Violations
If you see any of the following, revert them (Reverting Edits), and cite the applicable policy in your edit summary:
Simple and obvious vandalism (WP:VAND); for more information, see Chapter 7.
Linkspam (WP:SPAM); see Chapter 7.
Copyright violations (WP:COPYVIO); see Possible responses.
Unsourced or poorly sourced controversial material about living persons (WP:BLP); see ???.
Privacy violations (WP:BLP); ???.
Proper Weight and Balance
Most editors probably think of the policy Wikipedia:Neutral point of view (shortcut: WP:NPOV) as being about wording. For example, the following text wouldnât pass the POV test, since ...
Get Wikipedia: The Missing Manual now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.