Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle
The BOLD, revert, discuss cycle (BRD) is one of many optional strategies that editors may use to seek consensus. This process is not mandated by Wikipedia policy, but it can be useful for identifying objections, keeping discussion moving forward and helping to break deadlocks. In other situations, you may have better success with alternatives to this approach. Care and diplomacy should be exercised. Some editors will see any reversion as a challenge, so be considerate and patient.
Bold editing is a fundamental principle of Wikipedia. All editors are welcome to make positive contributions. It's how new information is added to Wikipedia. When in doubt, edit! Either the edit will get the attention of interested editors, or you will simply improve the page. Either is a good outcome.
Revert an edit if it is not an improvement, and only if you cannot immediately refine it. Consider reverting only when necessary. BRD does not encourage reverting, but recognizes that reversions happen. When reverting, be specific about your reasons in the edit summary and use links if needed. Look at the article's history and its talk page to see if a discussion has begun. If not, you may begin one. (See Wikipedia:Wikipedia abbreviations for a glossary of common abbreviations you might see.)
Discuss your bold edit with the person who reverted you. To follow BRD specifically, instead of one of the many alternatives, you must not restore your bold edit, make a different edit to this part of the page, engage in back-and-forth reverting, or start any of the larger dispute resolution processes. Talk to that one person until the two of you have reached an agreement.
Cycle. To avoid bogging down in discussion, when you have a better understanding of the reverter's concerns, you may attempt a new edit that reasonably addresses some aspect of those concerns. You can try this even if the discussion has not reached an explicit conclusion, but be sure to avoid engaging in any kind of edit warring.
General overview
- When to use
- While editing a particular page that many editors are discussing with little to no progress being made, or when an editor's concerns are not addressed on the talk page after a reasonable amount of effort.
- How to proceed
- Find an interested person, and reach a compromise or consensus with that person, in one-on-one discussion.
- Be bold, and make what you currently believe to be the optimal changes based on your best effort. Your change might involve re-writing, rearranging, adding or removing information.
- Wait until someone reverts your edit. You have now discovered your first VIP.
- Discuss the changes you would like to make with this VIP, perhaps using other forms of Wikipedia dispute resolution as needed, and reach an agreement. Apply your agreement. When reverts have stopped, you are done.
Use cases
BRD is most useful for pages where seeking and achieving consensus in advance of the bold edit could be difficult, perhaps because it is not clear which other editors are watching or sufficiently interested in the page, though there are other suitable methods. BRD helps editors who have a good grasp of a subject to rapidly engage discussion.
Examples cases for use include where:
- Two factions are engaged in an edit war and a bold edit is made as a compromise or middle ground.
- Discussion has died out with no agreement being reached.
- Active discussion is not producing results.
- Your view differs significantly from a rough consensus on an emotionally loaded subject.
- Local consensus is currently opposed to making any changes whatsoever (when pages are frozen, "policy", or high-profile)
BRD is best used by experienced Wikipedia editors. It may require more diplomacy and skill to use successfully than other methods, and has more potential for failure. Using BRD in volatile situations is discouraged.
In general, BRD fails if:
- ...there is consensus in the community against the specific change you'd like to make.
- ...there is a dispute on the page, by editors with entrenched positions, and you are reigniting a debate that has achieved stalemate without consensus.
- ...the page is protected. (You may request unprotection.)
- ...the page is subject to some other access control. (Get the control lifted.)
- ...you lose tempo.
- ...a single editor is reverting changes and exhibiting other forms of ownership attitudes.
- ...individuals who are disinterested revert bold changes.
BRD is especially successful where:
- ... people haven't really thought things through yet.
- ... people are only discussing policy or theory, and are not applying reasoning or trying to negotiate consensus.
- ... people are talking past each other instead of getting down to brass tacks with concrete proposals.
In short: boldly negotiate where no one has negotiated before.
What BRD is not
- BRD is not a justification for imposing one's own view or for tendentious editing.
- BRD is not a valid excuse for reverting good-faith efforts to improve a page simply because you don't like the changes.
- BRD is never a reason for reverting. Unless the reversion is supported by policies, guidelines or common sense, the reversion is not part of BRD cycle.
- BRD is not an excuse to revert any change more than once. This applies equally to bold editors and to reverters. If your reversion is met with another bold effort, then you should consider not reverting, but discussing. The talk page is open to all editors, not just bold ones. The first person to start a discussion is the person who is best following BRD.
- BRD is not mandatory. Neither are editors obliged to start it nor are they obliged to stick to it just because you started it. They may try one of the alternatives given below, or even an alternative not mentioned here.
- BRD is not a valid course of action when using advanced permissions. Editors with permissions such as administrator or template editor can take actions which few editors are able to revert if they disagree preventing the R step of BRD.
Process
Making bold edits may sometimes draw a response from an interested editor, who may have the article on their watchlist. If no one responds, you have the silent consensus to continue editing. If your edit is reverted, the BRD cycle has been initiated by the reverting editor.
After someone reverts your change, thus taking a stand for the existing version or against the change, you can proceed toward a consensus with the challenging editor through discussion on a talk page. While discussing the disputed content, neither editor should revert or change the content being discussed until a compromise or consensus is reached. Each pass through the cycle may find a new, interested editor to work with, or new issue being disputed. If you follow the process as it is intended each time, you should eventually achieve consensus with all parties. As such, BRD is in general not an end unto itself; it moves the process past a blockage, and helps people get back to cooperative editing.
If the BRD process works ideally (sometimes it does not), people will after a time begin to refrain from outright reversion, and edits will start to flow more naturally.
For each step in the cycle, here are some points to remember.
Bold
- Stay focused: Make only changes you absolutely need to. A bold edit doesn't have to be a huge edit, and keeping your edit focused is more likely to yield results than making an over-reaching change. If a bold edit might be controversial, consider adding "(revert if inappropriate)" or similar to the edit summary to alert others.
- See what happens next: Stop editing the page long enough to see if anyone objects. Depending on the nature of your change and the traffic on the page, this may take anywhere from mere minutes to more than a week.
- Expect resistance—even hostility: Be ready to start a discussion as soon as you notice that anyone has objected. If you want, you can even write your response while you are waiting to see what happens.
- Be respectful: Regardless of what others say, keep your composure.
Revert
- Before reverting, first consider whether the original text could have been better improved in a different way or if part of the edit can be fixed to WP:PRESERVE some of the edit, and whether you would like to make that bold edit instead. Partial reversion, WP:PARTR, is better than complete reversion. The other disputant may respond with another bold edit, or with a refinement on your improvement. The "WP:Bold-refine" process is the ideal collaborative editing cycle. Improving pages through collaborative editing is ideal. However, if you find yourself making reversions or near-reversions, then stop editing and move to the next stage, "Discuss".
- Before reverting a change to an article in the absence of explicit consensus, be sure you actually have a disagreement with the content of the bold edit (and can express that disagreement), not merely a concern that someone else might disagree with the edit. A revert needs to present a path forward, either by expressing a concern with the content of the edit itself, or pointing to a previous discussion that did.
- In the edit summary of your revert, briefly explain why you reverted and (possibly with a link to WP:BRD) encourage the bold editor to start a discussion on the article talk page if they want to learn more about why you reverted. Alternatively, start a discussion yourself on the article talk page about the issue. People feel more cooperative if you let them know that you're willing to listen to their case for the change. Otherwise, a revert can seem brusque.
- If you revert twice, then you are no longer following the BRD cycle: If your reversion is reverted, then there may be a good reason for it. Go to the talk page to learn why you were reverted.
- If people start making non-revert changes again, you are done: The normal editing cycle has been restored.