Wikipedia:Sample edit requests

Most successful edit requests are highly specific, and include citations to high-quality reliable, independent sources. They are also uncontroversial changes, or they have already been supported by consensus elsewhere on the talk page. For additional guidance around planning an edit request, and ensuring that they are specific, uncontroversial, necessary, and sensible, see Edit requests.

Here are some examples of such requests that you can modify for your own use:

Quick fixes
For the purposes of this example, let's say there is an article titled "Dog", which currently contains this sentence in the "Anatomy" section: "Modern dog breeds show more variation in size, apperance and behavior than any other domestic animal."

An example edit request to make a quick fix:

This is a high-quality edit request because it provides a specific location of the error, and points out specifically what the error is. This level of specificity is more useful than "There is a typo in this article", even if the typo appears obvious.

Introducing new information
For the purposes of this example, let's say there is an article titled "Bird", which currently consists of two sentences:

"Birds are vertebrates. They have feathers."

An example edit request to add new information:

This is a high-quality edit request because it provides a specific change, including the location in the article where the information ought to be added. The requester also provided two high-quality reliable sources, with links to them and direct quotes showing that they support the suggested change. Finally, the requester provided the specific wording and wikimarkup they thought ought to be used, complete with inline citations which they formatted with citation templates using RefToolbar. The usage of the reftalk template allows these to render directly in the edit request so they are easily visible to people who respond to the edit request, and do not obstruct other talk page comments by rendering in the default location at the bottom of the page.

Note: These kinds of changes can be the type of edit that would need consensus before it could be implemented, so when making possibly contentious changes you should consider beginning a discussion without the edit request template first, and then use the template once consensus is reached if you need someone to help you implement the change.

Markup
Add to the first sentence that birds evolved from dinosaurs. See "Birds Evolved From Dinosaurs Slowly—Then Took Off" from National Geographic ("Birds evolved from dinosaurs in patchwork fashion over tens of millions of years before finally taking to the skies some 150 million years ago, paleontologists report.") and "The Origin and Diversification of Birds" from Current Biology ("It is now widely accepted, even by ornithologists, that birds evolved from dinosaurs..."). Suggested wording with citations:

Birds are vertebrates that evolved from dinosaurs.

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Changing content
For the purposes of this example, let's say there is an article titled "Pluto", which currently consists of the sentence:

"Pluto is a planet in the Kuiper belt."

An example edit request to change information:

This is a high-quality edit request because it provides a specific change in the format of "change X to Y". The requester also provided two high-quality reliable sources, with links to them and direct quotes showing that they support the suggested change. Finally, the requester provided the specific wording and wikimarkup they thought ought to be used, complete with inline citations which they formatted with citation templates using RefToolbar. The usage of the reftalk template allows these to render directly in the edit request so they are easily visible to people who respond to the edit request, and do not obstruct other talk page comments by rendering in the default location at the bottom of the page.

Note: These kinds of changes can be the type of edit that would need consensus before it could be implemented, so when making possibly contentious changes you should consider beginning a discussion without the edit request template first, and then use the template once consensus is reached if you need someone to help you implement the change.

Markup
After the IAU definition of planet in 2006, Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet. This is not made clear in the sentence "Pluto is a planet in the Kuiper belt", which should be rephrased to clarify that Pluto is a dwarf planet. This can be sourced to "Pluto and the Developing Landscape of Our Solar System" by the International Astronomical Union (IAU): "The IAU Resolution means that the Solar System officially consists of eight planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. A new distinct class of objects called dwarf planets was also decided on. It was agreed that planets and dwarf planets are two distinct classes of objects. The first members of the dwarf planet category are Ceres, Pluto and Eris, formerly known as 2003 UB313." It is also supported by "Pluto" by National Geographic: "The world was introduced to dwarf planets in 2006, when petite Pluto was stripped of its planet status and reclassified as a dwarf planet.". Suggested wording with citations:

Pluto is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt.

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Deleting content
For the purposes of this example, let's say there is an article titled "Bird", which currently consists of two sentences:

"Birds are vertebrates. All birds can fly."

An example edit request to delete information:

This is a high-quality edit request because it specifies exactly which text ought to be removed, and why. Note that the requester included a source describing why the text is inaccurate, which shows that it ought to be removed entirely—in some cases, unsourced text simply needs to be sourced.

Note: These kinds of changes can be the type of edit that would need consensus before it could be implemented, so when making possibly contentious changes you should consider beginning a discussion without the edit request template first, and then use the template once consensus is reached if you need someone to help you implement the change.