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 | This page in a nutshell: Everyone is empowered to change Wikipedia, but that means less than you might think. |
Almost every Wikipedia user, whether they are a registered Wikipedian with an account and password or are just anonymously browsing, sees and can use an edit link on almost every page of the Encyclopedia, and following that link, can change the content of the page.
And these changes are then immediately visible to anyone who views that page. And this applies to our articles, and our policies, and other people's user pages, and many others. Isn't it exciting?
Yes. But... isn't it also suicide?
No. And that is even more exciting! And the whole reason that Wikipedia works.
Wikipedia has page histories. So every time you make a change to an article (or most other pages), the old version is still there too, and is almost as easily accessible to a reader or to another editor as the current version of the page.
And so if you do something silly, someone else can easily undo it. We call this reverting, and it's one reason we encourage you to be bold.
Of course it's not a blank check. Some users waste so much of other people's time that as a last resort we restrict their editing. Some pages attract so much rubbish, or are so critical to the project, that as a last resort we restrict editing of them. Some material is so damaging that we immediately and permanently remove it.
But all of these are rare, and again, that's why Wikipedia works.