Wikipedia:Recheck before posting

It is important to double-check, or recheck, the text (or images) before posting remarks. In perhaps 20% of cases, the actual data is not as imagined, due to illusions or delays in the displayed results. The crucial question to ask is: "Are you absolutely sure?"

Because of the numerous details in text formatting, in many cases, working with Wikipedia pages is similar to the detailed work of developing computer software source code, so there are many tiny details which can be overlooked, or mistaken, when trying to spot problems or errors. Always recheck the results, such as scanning through the text a second time, or run another edit-preview of a page to "Show preview" of the results, before clicking "Save page".

When displaying a Wikipedia page, the current page contents might not be rendered, yet, on the screen, due to browser caching which displays an older version of the page contents. It is always important to re-display a page with URL option "&action=purge" to completely re-generate the webpage, when it seems that current text has not appeared yet.

Recheck template operation

In many cases, the results obtained from running a markup template can be mistaken, by using incorrect parameters, slightly misspelled. It is important to note that most templates do not perform parameter validation, and so a slightly misspelled parameter name will often be totally ignored, as if the feature were 100% broken. The option "border=1" will not be activated by "bodrer=1". This concept of mis-using a tool, such as with wrong or misspelled parameters is often termed "pilot error" as with an airplane pilot who fails to use the aircraft controls correctly.

In many other cases, the text in a page might appear to be wrongly formatted by a template; however, upon closer inspection, in reality, the text was actually hand-coded in a similar style as template results, but using an improper format, to give the illusion that a template was generating wrong output. Always double-check that the text is actually displayed through a template, rather than hard-coded text which appears similar to template-generated text.

[ This essay is a quick draft to be expanded later. ]

See also

WP:98 percent table width anomaly WP:Why Johnny can't wiki-read WP:Wikimedia Foundation error WP:About translating German Wikipedia WP:Add wikilinked sections to balance NPOV WP:Advanced article editing WP:Advanced disambiguation issues WP:Advanced footnote formatting WP:Advanced table formatting WP:Advanced template coding WP:Advanced text formatting WP:Accepting other users WP:Allow time to melt and look again WP:Authors of Wikipedia WP:Avoiding difficult users

WP:Avoiding MediaWiki expansion depth limit WP:Avoiding POV funnels WP:Avoiding Wikipedia quirks WP:Blanking sections violates many policies WP:BLP policy advises fix over delete WP:Most read articles in 2008 WP:Most read articles in 2009 WP:Most read articles in 2010 WP:No angry mastodons just madmen WP:No consensus WP:Overlink crisis WP:Pruning article revisions WP:Thinking outside the infobox WP:Wikifinagling WP:Wikifogging