Plunge forward

This page in a nutshell:Don't worry about being perfect or making mistakes. If something needs to be done, do it. Jump in and make useful edits to articles.

This page documents a Wikivoyage guideline.

It is a generally accepted standard that editors should follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflectconsensus.When in doubt, discuss first on thetalk page.

Being a traveller requires courage, self-confidence, passion and perseverance. Being aWikivoyagerrequires the same qualities. We expect you toplunge forwardinto the task of authoring, editing, and illustrating articles on Wikivoyage.Youcaneditany article on Wikivoyage (even this one!),and we hope that you do.We need your knowledge, your experience, your talent, and your attention.

Plunging forward means:

Being assertive.Your knowledge and experience count! There are few (if any) "travel experts" working on Wikivoyage (if they exist anywhere), so don't worry about not being good enough.We want your help.
Experimenting.There's really not much permanent damage you can do to Wikivoyage. If things get really broken, other Wikivoyagers will come in and fix them.
Doing what's OK right now.You don't have to create a perfect, fully-formed article the first time around. Just make aquick contributionor add abasic outlineif an article about your favorite town that doesn't yet exist. Get your thoughts down and let others expand on them. That's how awikiworks!
Go ahead.You have as much right to add, change and improveanythingyou see on Wikivoyage as anyone else has. You don't need to ask anyone or even to have an account, if you can fix or improve anything. If you make a change, other people here will often help. So don't bother asking whether it's all right to plunge in – it probably is!

Soplunge forward!You will enjoy it!

...But don't be reckless!!

Don't be afraid of making mistakes, but at the same time, be aware that there are certain cases where you might find that your edit receives extra scrutiny or may be reverted by others:

Changes to policy.Pages in the Wikivoyage namespace represent agreed-uponconsensusof the editor community, so non-trivial changes should be discussed first on the policy'stalk page.
Changes to Wikivoyage style.Wikivoyage uses the samestandard section headingsfor all articles, so changes to top-level headings (for example, changing "Sleep" to "Accommodation" ) will normally be reverted.
Changes to high-visibility articles.An article likeUnited States of America,or any of thestar articles,is the result of potentially thousands of edits by hundreds of users, so edits to these articles will receive more scrutiny than those made to less prominent articles.
Changes to regional organization.A lot of effort goes into splitting uphuge cities into districts,or splitting uplarger regions into smaller ones,so in cases where the regional breakdown was the result of lengthy discussion changes should usually be proposed on the article talk page first.
Controversial edits.Political disputes,promotional material,andpersonal causesdon't belong in a travel guide.
Changing banners.Unlike other language Wikivoyages, banner changes need to be discussed on the talk page first. Exceptions are when it's changing it to fit our banner policy, 7:1 or when the banner is just in the completely wrong location

While everyone is encouraged to plunge forward, if someone else undoes your edit, you can view the article's history; there will usually be an explanation in the edit summary to indicate why the edit was reverted. If you still don't understand, ask for clarification on the article's talk page.