Wikipedia:That's why we preview, kids

This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

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This page in a nutshell: The preview button is your friend.

Editing a project such as Wikipedia provides many opportunities for good, quality writing. Many times, editors spend hours drafting long, flowing passages describing in intricate detail all of the interesting (and verifiable) facts about their chosen topic. Collaboration on the project's many talk pages helps editors from all over the world come to agreements on how best to improve the project. Many times an editor finds a small, forgotten article on some obscure topic and eagerly sets to the task of copyediting.

For every edit that goes as planned, without further modification, there is an edit that is almost immediately undone, redone, or modified. These are the edits that leave whole paragraphs in the tiny text of an unclosed <ref>, or that subsume whole pages of text with that 1000 px thumbnail image.

The preview button stands as a bastion of hope for the meticulous editor.