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You can fix these errors if you want to. Anyone can edit Wikipedia.


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If you know where Wikipedia is incorrect you fix it. They let almost anyone edit.

Anyone can edit Wikipedia.

The great thing about Wikipedia is that anyone can edit. Don't mind if I do...

Many Wikipedia articles can be edited by anyone. This is not secure.

Edit yes, but whether your edit survives whatever person is king of that particular corner of wikipedia is another matter. Try making an edit from a brand new account. Correcting errors on a website isnt worth such fights.

Someone could go and fix up the Wikipedia article..

You can't edit your own Wikipedia.

It's in bad taste to edit one's own Wikipedia page, even if there is an error.

Imagine you are reading wikipedia every day for years and really like its content and it gives a lot to you and then suddenly you see grave mistakes on some of the sites (like when I saw that wikipedia had the wrong year for nicolas cage's oscar win!), wouldn't you go "out of your way" to fix these mistakes? I mean wouldn't it annoy the living hell out of you to know that this mistake lives on while you go on consuming the rest of wikipedia? Nonetheless, ADDING stuff is a level higher but editing mistakes might be the first stepping stone...

Fixing Wikipedia articles is often impractical, because there are users who know the arcane Wikipedia rules better than you do and who can always give some sort of reason as to why your change can't be accepted. And even if the user is wrong, without a thorough knowledge of arcane Wikipedia rules, you'll have no way to prove that the user is wrong, so you'll be stuck.

Wikipedia is anyone can edit. It wouldn't be the first time someone did something like that.

Wikipedia is user editable.

Idk man, some good soul corrected a common language error on a site where many authors are not even native English speakers.

I am happy there are people willing to do the work for free and that Wikipedia is now better. Hopefully he corrects more errors in the future so I am less likely to pick up incorrect language in the future when I read the articles. Sounds like the right solution you are looking for to me.


Wikipedia's policy is that errors in existing pages should not be fixed.

It is entirely possible to fix those mistakes (one at a time) on Wikipedia.... if you do the research work to find out what happened.

But this takes significant effort (like, a half-day of research to sort out one claim), and then sometimes back and forth with other Wikipedians to convince people that you actually chased down the real story.

The problem is that for every mistake someone is willing to put effort into fixing, there are another 100 that nobody ever notices.


Why not just edit wikipedia to be correct?

If an edit to Wikipedia has new, cited information, but the citation is in the wrong format, someone will probably fix it. If it's uncited writing, and not well written, it's probably going to be reverted.

There are sandbox pages, user pages, and talk pages for working drafts. But the main space pages are seen by millions of people, and are not an appropriate place to write drafts. Realistically, if you can't write English without grammatical errors, trying to edit Wikipedia will be a frustrating experience.


I've never been able to successfully alter a Wikipedia article, even for something as simple as a typo correction.

Bots always revert my changes within seconds.


I think there is merit in trying to "fix" wikipedia. The solution shouldn't always be "I'll make my own and get it right"
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