Week 3: Be bold

The mechanics of a first contribution, the standard of evidence behind it, and the instruction Wikipedia has given newcomers since its second day

8 March 2027

Wikipedia’s advice to a new editor fits on a page and has barely changed since somebody wrote it down on 17 January 2001, two days after the site opened: be bold. Make the change. Do not ask permission, do not propose it on the talk page first, do not wait for consensus that no one is going to assemble on your behalf.

This is generous advice and it is also a trap, because the sentence that follows it in practice is: and then be reverted. The cycle has a shortcut, WP:BRD, and learning to read the second letter as normal rather than as rejection is most of what separates the ten percent who stay from the ninety percent who do not.

Underneath the etiquette is a standard of evidence that is stranger than it looks. Wikipedia does not ask whether your claim is true. It asks whether it has already been published somewhere a reasonable person would trust, which means a true statement you know first-hand is inadmissible and a false one in a newspaper is fine until a better source contradicts it.

You will hate this rule in week 3 and defend it in week 6.

Outline#

• verifiability, not truth — and what the rule is actually protecting
• the anatomy of an edit: summary line, minor flag, watchlist, diff
• WP:BOLD, WP:BRD, and reading a revert as information
• edit summaries as the smallest unit of professional courtesy
• what counts as your first contribution in this course, and what does not