From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"WP:NOW" redirects here. For use of the word "now" within Wikipedia articles, see
MOS:CURRENT
.
Essay on editing Wikipedia
| This page in a nutshell:
When an article contains
unverifiable
content or lacks vital content, it needs to be corrected
now
before someone reads it and is misled by it.
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Wikipedia is one of the first sources many people check when doing research. As a result, any misinformation found here could quickly spread, and should be immediately corrected before any damage is done. As a corollary, when an article lacks vital content, that content should be added as quickly as possible.
Google any word, and there is a good chance a Wikipedia article will be the first or second search result. Moreover, many of the results lower down the rankings are likely to be sites that mirror Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is unavoidable
.
For this reason Wikipedia is frequently the first thing people read when, for example, they wish to find out about a political party or candidate during an election. Although it ought not be the
final
stop for someone seeking information of this kind, its ease of access frequently
does
make it the first and last source of information for many people.
Some people will tell you
there is no deadline
, because all errors will be corrected in the long run. That may or may not be true, but most people won't keep revisiting an article every week as it gradually improves. They will read only one version of an article: the one that is available
right now
. Therefore
if an article contains false or unverifiable content,
please
correct it yourself
immediately
.
Misinformation can trickle from a Wikipedia article to a published secondary source. If that source matches Wikipedia's
guideline on selecting reliable sources
, the misinformed source can now be used as a citation to back up the inaccurate Wikipedia article, and to give it still more false credibility. A vicious circle emerges: false information in Wikipedia article is included in a published source, that source is cited in a journal article, and then that journal article is cited again on Wikipedia.
Wikipedia's focus on '
verifiability over truth
' means that Wikipedia policies are now powerless to discredit this untrue but apparently well-sourced claim. Wikipedia policy notes this danger in
WP:CIRCULAR
. This way falsehoods grow on Wikipedia like weeds, and it requires a great effort with many reliable (really!) sources to uproot them.
In 2012, the authors of the
Leveson report
were taken in by a Wikipedia editor who named a fellow student as a co-founder of
The Independent
newspaper.
[1]
The Leveson report easily met Wikipedia's criteria as a reliable source, and would likely have been used to support the original claim had the prank not been discovered. Fortunately this error was corrected, but how many times have similar mistakes happened and never been detected? Rather than let this happen, it is far better to remove manifestly false content from an article, now.
We can disagree over whether this or that article is about something important. Importance is highly subjective. But whatever your views, a great many Wikipedia articles are about something important to you. There are articles about everything under the sun, the sun itself, and everything beyond it.
If an article has been written at all, then its subject is important to somebody. If an article survives deletion proposals, or is never nominated for deletion, then it presumably satisfies Wikipedia's notability criteria, and its subject is important enough to deserve accurate treatment.
Wikipedia has a massive effect on what people think
. There wouldn't be any point to Wikipedia if it didn't. When a corporation uses Wikipedia to unfairly disparage a competitor, or a government to smear an enemy, it will succeed for as long as it remains unchallenged.
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- Adminitis
- Akin's Laws of Article Writing
- Alternatives to edit warring
- ANI flu
- Anti-Wikipedian
- Anti-Wikipedianism
- Articlecountitis
- Asshole John rule
- Assume bad faith
- Assume faith
- Assume good wraith
- Assume stupidity
- Assume that everyone's assuming good faith, assuming that you are assuming good faith
- Avoid using preview button
- Avoid using wikilinks
- Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense
- Barnstaritis
- Before they were notable
- BOLD, revert, revert, revert
- Boston Tea Party
- Butterfly effect
- CaPiTaLiZaTiOn MuCh?
- Complete bollocks
- Counting forks
- Counting juntas
- Crap
- Don't stuff beans up your nose
- Don't-give-a-fuckism
- Don't abbreviate "Wikipedia" as "Wiki"!
- Don't delete the main page
- Editcountitis
- Edits Per Day
- Editsummarisis
- Editing Under the Influence
- Embrace Stop Signs
- Emerson
- Fart
- Five Fs of Wikipedia
- Seven Ages of Editor, by Will E. Spear-Shake
- Go ahead, vandalize
- How many Wikipedians does it take to change a lightbulb?
- How to get away with UPE
- How to put up a straight pole by pushing it at an angle
- How to vandalize correctly
- How to win a citation war
- Ignore all essays
- Ignore every single rule
- Is that even an essay?
- Mess with the templates
- My local pond
- Newcomers are delicious, so go ahead and bite them
- Legal vandalism
- List of jokes about Wikipedia
- LTTAUTMAOK
- No climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man
- No one cares about your garage band
- No one really cares
- No, really
- No sorcery threats
- Notability is not eternal
- Oops Defense
- Play the game
- Please be a giant dick, so we can ban you
- Please bite the newbies
- Please do not murder the newcomers
- Pledge of Tranquility
- R-e-s-p-e-c-t
- Requests for medication
- Requirements for adminship
- Rouge admin
- Rouge editor
- Sarcasm is really helpful
- Sausages for tasting
- The Night Before Wikimas
- The first rule of Wikipedia
- The Five Pillars of Untruth
- Things that should not be surprising
- The WikiBible
- Watchlistitis
- Wikipedia is an MMORPG
- WTF? OMG! TMD TLA. ARG!
- What Wikipedia is not/Outtakes
- Why not create an account?
- Yes legal threats
- You don't have to be mad to work here, but
- You should not write meaningless lists
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About essays
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Policies and guidelines
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