Help talk:Edit summary/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Semi-protected edit request on 14 April 2014

I am John White & I am trying to make edits to my bio that is posted on Wikipedia. I ask for your assistance in making these edits.

John White LaBelieves (talk) 14:34, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

LaBelieves (talk) 14:34, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

@LaBelieves: Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Help:Edit summary. Please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:23, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 12 May 2014

Please edit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kranti_Kanade page so that points 'This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. (February 2011)' & 'This article appears to be written like an advertisement. (February 2011)' go away. Please delete any information for which references cannot be found. Gautam.rayakar (talk) 13:17, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

 Not done This is not the page to repeat questions that have already been asked and answered three times at Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions. Arjayay (talk) 14:04, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Proposed addition to "Avoiding personal attacks"

There is a proposal to add a short paragraph to the "Avoiding personal attacks" section of the No personal attacks policy page. The discussion is Proposed addition to "Avoiding personal attacks". Your participation is welcome. Lightbreather (talk) 00:15, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 19 December 2014

1. REDIRECT Birdo

90.0.133.65 (talk) 17:47, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Not done. Null request. --  Gadget850 ^talk 18:11, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

• Gadget850, you may be interested in the user's other edits, all now reverted. Drmies (talk) 18:12, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 17 May 2015

the web-address in "external links" is to some bull-shit business that has nothing to do with the wiki page 74.44.226.91 (talk) 05:20, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. You have probably posted in the wrong place, as there is no external links section on this page. Please tell us the name of the article where the spam link appears, and we will be happy to remove it. Altamel (talk) 05:33, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 29 June 2015

Change the neelima(Shurithi) details, cause the info is wrong SasihariKarthikeyan (talk) 09:36, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

@SasihariKarthikeyan: Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Help:Edit summary. Please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:17, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Can no longer add my own edit summaries

Hi: I have tried to add my own edit summaries to a couple of articles but am only really allowed to pick from a drop down menu (including some of the ones I usually use); has something changed? I looked at my preferences page but nothing seemed wrong... any help appreciated. Maybe I should log out and log back in? [just tried that last one; no luck] FeanorStar7 — Preceding unsigned comment added by FeanorStar7 (talk • contribs) 11:41, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

What browser/app/device do you use to edit? PrimeHunter (talk) 13:19, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

@FeanorStar7: Do you use Internet Explorer? If so, see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 137#Forced HTTPS and Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 138#HTTPS by default. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:28, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you both for your questions: I generally use Google Chrome but sometimes use Firefox. I edit on a desktop computer. I will look at the village pump links you mentioned; also I tried a complete reboot to see if that would make a difference; it didn't.--FeanorStar7 23:24, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

I just noticed this problem on Google Chrome today too. Not a problem on Safari. I think it has something to do with the way Chrome handles Javascript. It's also been noted that Chrome sometimes has a hard time handling local clipboards, for example. jps (talk) 12:51, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Chrome issues are currently discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 139#Edit summaries. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:42, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 9 September 2015

Changed text to be more neutral and unbiased Cicirao (talk) 17:21, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

 Not done as you are in the wrong place, as this page is only to discuss improvements to Help:Edit summary - Arjayay (talk) 17:31, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 9 September 2015

Added more reliable, neutral info about Earth's history from the talk page Cicirao (talk) 17:28, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

 Not done as you are still in the wrong place, as this page is only to discuss improvements to Help:Edit summary, please do not post here again - Arjayay (talk) 17:32, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 18 September 2015

CORRECTION: Story appears in Forensic Files Season 1 Episode 11 (not Season 11 Episode 40, which doesn't exist) 70.50.60.207 (talk) 00:49, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Help:Edit summary. If possible, please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned. If you cannot edit the article's talk page, you can instead make your request at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection#Current requests for edits to a protected page. Gparyani (talk) 03:49, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Spaces get lost for links in edit summaries

The space(s) before a link in an edit summary get removed, unlike in articles. If you put them inside the link, they work. Is it supposed to be that way? And why no edit summer for a new section? Gah4 (talk) 06:45, 4 November 2016 (UTC) This edit has an edit summary with space before its link. Gah4 (talk) 06:47, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

No comments on this yet? Is that the way it is supposed to work? Gah4 (talk) 17:51, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

@Gah4: This talk page is for discussing changes to the text of Help:Edit summary. Many talk pages have low activity and some posts get no comments. You can ask questions about using Wikipedia at Wikipedia:Help desk or Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions. The new section tab makes an automatic edit summary with the name of the section and the text "new section" like in [1]. The arrow "→‎" to the left of the section name is a link to the section. If you want another edit summary then you have to use an edit link and create the section by manually writing the section heading inside == ... ==. I don't understand what you say about spaces. Spaces are not removed before a link but multiple spaces everywhere may be displayed as a single space like in normal wikitext and html. Your edit summary in [2] does have a space before the link. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:18, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Which page is for discussing the processing done to edit summaries? If you look at the edit summary for this post, such as in your Watchlist, there is no space between the y of summary and the H of Help_talk. Or maybe it is a browser bug? Gah4 (talk) 18:36, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

It seems to be a Safari feature. With Firefox, I get one space, even if I put in more. Safari shows it with no space, but cut and paste sees them all. Strange. Gah4 (talk) 18:40, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

@Gah4: I see a space in both Firefox and Safari 5.1.7 on Windows Vista. Technical problems can be discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) or Phabricator but it sounds like a minor issue for some Safari users. I wonder whether your Safari has problems with italics. I see a space in all these:

• OK, now I get an edit summary Help:Edit_summary
• OK, now I get an edit summary Help:Edit_summary
• OK, now I get an edit summary Help:Edit_summary
• OK, now I get an edit summary Help:Edit_summary

PrimeHunter (talk) 18:56, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I see spaces in all of those. It only seems to happen in the edit summary, either in Watchlist, or in Show preview before Save Changes. Looking at the HTML, all the space that I put in are right before an <a> tag, and seem to get lost, but only, as far as I know, in edit summaries, when Safari displays it. It might be an HTML error, (that is, undefined in HTML), or a Safari bug. I have Safari 8.0.8 on OS X. Thanks for the help. Gah4 (talk) 19:03, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

@Gah4: I see a space in this attempt to mimic an edit summary:

• (→Spaces get lost for links in edit summaries: OK, now I get an edit summary Help:Edit_summary)

PrimeHunter (talk) 20:17, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I see the space, too. Mimic doesn't work, only real ones work. Gah4 (talk) 20:32, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

OK, here is a somewhat minimal set of HTML that does it. I can put this in a file with .html extension, and load it with file:/// .... .html

<html> (<span dir="auto"> OK, <a href="/wiki/Help_talk:Edit_summary">Help_talk:Edit_summary</a></span>) </html>

Gah4 (talk) 21:08, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

@Gah4: dir="auto" tells the browser to choose between ltr (left-to-right) and rtl (right-to-left). This is probably done because some users use right-to-left languages in edit summaries. Maybe your browser chooses right-to-left for the space and link. Do you see a space right after the link? I tried this in a html file:

<html>
(<span> OK, <a href="/wiki/Help_talk:Edit_summary">Help_talk:Edit_summary</a></span>) end<br/>
(<span dir="auto"> OK, <a href="/wiki/Help_talk:Edit_summary">Help_talk:Edit_summary</a></span>) end<br/>
(<span dir="ltr"> OK, <a href="/wiki/Help_talk:Edit_summary">Help_talk:Edit_summary</a></span>) end<br/>
(<span dir="rtl"> OK, <a href="/wiki/Help_talk:Edit_summary">Help_talk:Edit_summary</a></span>) end<br/>
</html>

I see a space right before the link in all four. The first three look identical. In the fourth I see no space before "OK" but instead a space right after the link. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:59, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Yes, that is what my Safari (8.0.8) does, and also Firefox 45.4.0. Gah4 (talk) 01:38, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

There is another that I have noticed for some time, maybe also in edit summaries. Some text, maybe only italic, but maybe others, when followed by a closing paren, has the paren too far to the left, overwriting the last character. Maybe related, though I didn't think about it before. Gah4 (talk) 01:38, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

OK, I updated Safari to 10.0.1 and it seems to have fixed the problem. Thanks all. Gah4 (talk) 04:43, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

Not Necessarily Helpful

I don't think edit summaries are necessarily helpful. (1) If you are watching the page, you probably should check the edit itself. Otherwise there is no way of determining if the summary is misleading or not. As this page says, editors should not give misleading summaries, but this is preaching to the converted. (2) Pasting the text of your edit into the summary space is just annoying in many cases. It's quite pointless on a discussion page because you have to read the thread to understand the context. (3) Many attempts to explain edits are incomprehensible without looking at the edit itself. I'm not saying that people shouldn't provide edit summaries, but I think the insistence on them is over the top and counterproductive in some cases.--Jack Upland (talk) 19:53, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

I agree that edit summaries are not necessarily helpful, but that is not an argument against using them. Do you have a specific suggestion? Robert McClenon (talk) 00:47, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

I think of it the other way: with the appropriate edit summary I will look at a change that I otherwise might not. If you are seriously watching a page, I suppose you should always look, but I have many pages that I am not that serious about. If I made one change to them, I put them on the watch list. I have Manual of Style on my watch list after asking some questions in its talk page. Most things I don't follow, though. Edit summaries are useful, but maybe not so useful as one might hope. Gah4 (talk) 06:29, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

In the big picture, the habit of leaving an edit summary is always useful to others. At the basic level, it tells others that you acknowledge that Wikipedia is collaborative. And it saves other editors' time. After you've been editing for a while, you will come across certain editors repeatedly and get to "know" them. If they tend to leave informative edit summaries, you may find that when you come across edits of theirs in a page history, the summary (or lack thereof) is often enough to tell you whether you want to review the edit. Plus, when you encounter an editor who is new to you, you can often tell from a quick look at the edit summaries on their contributions page what kind of work the person does here. Eric ^talk 14:12, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) I agree with Eric. I leave an edit summary for almost every edit I make to an article (except for reverting vandalism). Sometimes this is only a single word such as "clarification" or "conciseness" but this helps the discussion progress if another editor disagrees with my edits. DrChrissy ^(talk) 17:43, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Page needs updating

The screenshots on the page do not match what is currently displayed. Spel-Punc-Gram (talk) 22:58, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Judging by threads at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Save changes buttons - accessibility it might not yet be stable. Let's wait until it is. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:58, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

‘Genuine vs artificial sea/beach glass

The last writer states that ‘artificial’ glass is only made by using acid or a rock tumbler to produce the appearance of shards of glass tumbled in the water for many years. For many years, people walking the beaches of Lake Michigan have found glass that has been tumbled for many years in the water and sands and is cloudy with smooth edges. This is never referred to as ‘sea glass’ because it has been in the waters of the Great Lakes for many years and is referred to as ‘beach glass’. I can assure you it is naturally tumbled in the water. There are documented incidences of freighters and smaller vessels sinking 50-100 years ago. All of the glass items from those vessels have been tumbling in the lake waters for all of those years and are eventually thrown into the beaches as ‘genuine beach glass’. I have found pieces of finished glass with wire embedded inside that came from factories, etc. and have thousands of ‘genuine’ beach glass that never was inside a tumbler. For a writer to make a blanket statement that glass not found on ocean beaches becomes frosted and smooth only from a tumbler or acid is a very uninformed statement. Please correct your mistake. AdriSimone (talk) 13:46, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

AdriSimone Welcome to Wikipedia and thank you for your interest. Unfortunately I can't tell from the above which particular Wikipedia article you are concerned about. Would you please make your point at the talk page of that article? It will carry more weight, however, if you can make reference to any published work confirming what you say, as we aim to ensure that everything in Wikipedia can be verified and so can't be based solely on someone's personal observation: Noyster (talk), 13:58, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

FIES?

What does the abbreviation in WP:FIES refer to? I assume the “ES” is for “edit summary,” but the rest? —67.14.236.50 (talk) 15:28, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

This old version suggests it means "fill in edit summary" -- John of Reading (talk) 15:48, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

That makes sense. Thanks! —67.14.236.50 (talk) 15:54, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Enter key should be disabled

Often I prematurely submit edits when I accidentally hit the Enter key when entering Edit Summaries, especially when typing quote characters. I think JavaScript should be added to disable form submission by the Enter key. Majesty of the Commons (talk) 03:11, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

The same thing has occasionally happened to me (and caused me to swear). However, in general, I do like to be able to submit edits by hitting Enter at the end of my summary, and I suspect there would be many others who do too. Any disabling of this behaviour, in my opinion, would therefore need to be by way of a user preference, gadget or script that could be used in personal javascript, as "opt-in", so that default behaviour was unchanged. -- Begoon 03:25, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

OK, I've created a userscript to do this. Majesty of the Commons (talk) 05:09, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

I'd probably have used e.target.id === 'wpSummary' instead of (or even in (&&) addition to) e.target.nodeName === 'INPUT' just to be more specific. It seems to work in my local .js (tested using Wikipedia:User script sandbox) with or without that change, so you could add it to your common.js or vector.js if you like - or global.js for all wiki sites. With it active I couldn't save this by hitting Enter in the edit summary field. -- Begoon 05:37, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for testing it. Less-specific is probably better to stop any other text, radio, or checkbox inputs from triggering publication. If I restricted it to the summary box, pressing Enter when the focus is on one of the "This is a minor edit" or "Watch this page" inputs would still trigger publication. The advantage of a browser user script over a wiki user script is that it still works when not logged-in. (I do most of my edits as an IP address — reversion notifications are too depressing.) But when I get a chance I'll convert it to a wiki script and add it to the list. — Majesty of the Commons (talk) 08:22, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Yeah - fair point about "minor edit" and "watch". I guess if you don't want the edit summary to trigger then you don't want those fields to either. I never edit logged out, but do edit from more than one device, so I prefer wiki .js - but I can see how a browser script could suit you better. -- Begoon 08:51, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

There's an older script at User:Anomie/nosubmitsummary.js. I'm not qualified to tell which is better. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:48, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Anomie's is short and neat, but looks like it would only work for the "summary" field itself unless amended, and Majesty prefers to include the "minor edit" and "watch" checkboxes etc. too. -- Begoon 08:55, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

How did you find that script? It's not in the list. It should work fine for just the summary box, because the use of the JQuery "which" function should cover all the conditions in the code from which I drew. Majesty of the Commons (talk) 09:05, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Here's my script. —Preceding undated comment added 09:11, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

@Majesty of the Commons: I don't remember! It's linked from Anomie's user page and is mentioned in some WP:VPT archives where I participated. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:14, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Help?

Hello. Can some admin help?

I spoke to an editor who is using tools to revert other editors, without leaving an edit summary that explains why. I told him that this wasn't right. Pointing to this page.

And to the fact that because he is using tools, he has a special responsibility to use them properly. I also pointed out that he had made a revert that led to inclusion of an error.

The editor said that what he did was fine. And supporting that view he pointed out that this page is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. He said he was open to me bringing in an admin to his page here to discuss whether it is fine for him to use tools like this, without an explaining edit summary, when reverting another editor (in this case as I say it was also including a misstatement). 2604:2000:E016:A700:B4D2:B929:113C:49D (talk) 21:45, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

2604:2000:E016:A700:B4D2:B929:113C:49D, at least WP:PING me when discussing my edits on another page. Next, seeing how few people watch and edit this page you might find it more helpful to bring up the issue at WP:AN or WP:ANI if you want to get an admin's immediate attention. If you don't necessarily want an admins help, just another experienced user, WP:Teahouse or WP:HD could be of use. Best, Classicwiki (talk) If you reply here, please ping me. 22:58, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

So many people are watching that I thought an admin would show up if interested. This seems to not fit ANI -- it is too small if it can be handled by those who follow this page. And I didn't ping u because I just sent people to your talkpage, which you said you were ok with -- I did not ask them to discuss it here. 2604:2000:E016:A700:9018:747C:BF0D:FD9 (talk) 04:45, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

When you undo you get the note: If you are undoing an edit that is not vandalism, explain the reason in the edit summary. That seems to suggest that if it is vandalism, no edit summary is needed. Gah4 (talk) 17:23, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Going from 255 bytes to 1000 codepoints

I've updated some stuff about the longer edit summaries that are now possible, but I'm not quite sure about some stuff:

• Should we be using the word "codepoint" as much as I did?
• What to do with the example? I've removed it for now because I couldn't think of an actual example that uses a ZWJ.
• Should there be a warning somewhere about not using overly long edit summaries?

Thanks for your input :) rchard2scout (talk) 10:41, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Very rarely I ran into the old limit. Partly because undo adds to the summary. One should probably be sure that the important points come early, so it can be understood if truncated. Gah4 (talk) 17:27, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Summary Tense

Should edit summary be in past tense or present tense? I know that with the git / github version control system the present with imperative mood is used due to the non-linearity of the the editing. KhoikhoiPossum (talk) 18:26, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

I don’t understand: "Edit summary" is not an imperative or a full-sentence statement including a verb in any tense, but a title, meaning "a summary of edits", "A summary of the edits that I did".

(Note that this title has been changed to simply "Summary" where it's actually used, i.e. on the page that you see when you edit, at the end, before the Save button; or for the Visual Editor, in the save box) Spel-Punc-Gram (talk) 23:07, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Some don't even write one, but it is nice to give other editors an idea. Sometimes one word is enough, sometimes I run to the limit, then remove enough words for it to fit. I think I usually write them in the present, as it is while I am still editing. (It isn't past until you hit SAVE.) But past is fine, too, if it feels right that way. Gah4 (talk) 01:51, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

I slip sometimes, but I mostly use past tense. I guess it’s because Wikipedia itself uses past tense for automatic summaries such as the undo summary (where it says “undid”). Interqwark (talk) 00:29, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Special links in edit summaries

I’ve seen special links (Special:____) being used in edit summaries before. One of them allowed no-redirect links to be placed in edit summaries. Also, I’ve seen links to diffs in edit summaries.

Is there a guide for this anywhere? Interqwark ^{talk contribs} 14:02, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

@Interqwark: All wikilinks (links using [[...]] syntax) can be placed in edit summaries, including all such links to special pages. Special:Diff is mentioned at Help:Diff#Internal links. I haven't heard of a special page for redirect=no. Special:PermanentLink (see Help:Permanent link) could be used to link to a revision, e.g. Special:PermanentLink/803533110 which is a link to the latest revision of the redirect Examples. But if the page gets new edits then Special:PermanentLink/803533110 would still link to the same revision. Help:Special page mentions many special pages but not all, Special:SpecialPages links to many special pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:29, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

I suppose I was wrong about the no-redirect links and meant the diff links instead. I don’t know why Wikipedia doesn’t have a Special page that allows you to use no-redirect links without the use of the template.

Thanks for the information! Interqwark ^{talk contribs} 20:56, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Template notice

Recently noted that Template:Summary2 states:

• This is considered an important guideline in Wikipedia.

This is obviously incorrect and needs to be addressed. Thanks - wolf 14:25, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

External links in edit summaries

I had added

• Avoid external links. While a link to a Wikipedia article or discussion may be very helpful to include in an edit summary, external links should be avoided.

which was subsequently removed with the edit summary People often use exlinks in edit summaries to say where they are getting their information, where a copyvio is pasted from, etc. This is not a bad thing. @Natureium:

It's a "bad thing" because of all the problems of WP:LINKSPAM.

I think it's bad form for indicating a ref, which I believe what "where they are getting their information" means.

Yes, external links are regularly used in edit summaries when dealing with copyvio issues.

Are there any other common situations?

I'm thinking of restoring the edit, identifying copyvio work as an exception, and linking WP:LINKSPAM. --Ronz (talk) 19:33, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

I don't know what's best here, but a couple examples, not copyvio: [3] [4] Levivich? ! 19:52, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

I occasionally use external links in edit summaries when I'm correcting typos (Wikipedia:Typo_Team/moss) to support my changes when I think there might be a question and/or to help me keep straight where I got my information from, such as this change. Schazjmd (talk) 19:58, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

External links to material directly relevant to the intended objective of an edit summary - i.e. an explanation as to why the edit was made - may on occasion be justified. Per the discussion at WP:ANI, external links serving other purposes almost certainly shouldn't be. I would have hoped this was self-evident, but it appears not to be. 86.147.97.26 (talk) 22:14, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

I don't see this as necessary (and particularly just as a reaction to that debatably intentioned Youtube incident). It is frequently useful to include an external link in an edit summary when the edit is concerned with adding/modifying references; saves watchers the need to wade into the code to check up on what was done. The paucity of reported problems in this regard should indicate that this is not an issue that needs prescriptive solving, and that there's no need to take away the option from GF editors. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 07:31, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

I don't think it is necessary either. Wikipedia already has multiple policies and guidelines which apply to off-topic linkspam, and there is no need to add specific instructions for each possible instance where such violations might occur. The general rules apply, so we don't need to restate them here. The only action that might be useful is to add to the "What to avoid in edit summaries" section wording such as "Avoid going off-topic." I'm not sure that needs further explanation. 86.147.97.26 (talk) 08:09, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

I think this is a poor idea both because URLs are appropriate for copyvio instances but there are also other valid instances, such as edit summaries which says 'adding www.foo as a reference for X, Y and Z', or 'updating this reference to www.foo which is more recent'. There's nothing wrong at all with those, I've seen them done plenty of times, and to roll those kinds of edit back because of some dumb "no URLs in edit summaries rule" would be counter-productive. Fish+Karate 10:09, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Agreed. It's better to leave it as is than to make a blanket ban and attempt to list all of the exceptions. Here's a recent example where I needed to use a link in a summary [5]. I was refuting an unsourced change to an article, by providing a source to show that the supposed staff change was not going to happen for six months.. There was no source in the article that deal this particular event, so proving the edit was incorrect via the summary was much better than just undoing it as an unsourced change. Meters (talk) 06:15, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for all the great comments. "External links" is clearly too broad. My thinking now is to make it specifically about link spam:

• "Avoid link spam. While external links can be helpful to include in an edit summary, avoid including external links that could be interpreted as promoting a website or product."

I'm not happy with the wording, but it at least gets the point across for discussion. --Ronz (talk) 20:13, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Do we have to tell people to not use edit summaries for spam, when they are already told not to spam at all? Natureium (talk) 20:15, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

While this may not be a common problem, it's a serious one. Given how huge a problem COI-editing and spamming are, how the recent ANI discussion dragged out, I think it deserves consideration. --Ronz (talk) 20:34, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Based upon Fish and karate's comments and a dispute I've been dealing with this weekend, we apparently need a training program that tells people that we're trying to build an encyclopedia, not a collection of edit summaries. You should not try to revert edit summaries, full stop. Reverting a good edit with a bad edit summary is (a) irrelevant, because they're not part of the encyclopedia, and (b) stupid, because it doesn't affect the other person's edit summary at all. The edit summary will remain in exactly the same invisible-to-99-percent-of-readers state whether you revert the good content edit or not. Truly bad edit summaries qualify for oversighting or admin-only deletion. The rest should be ignored. I've just taken a first pass at re-organizing the first section to be clearer on that point, as well as to put related reasons into separate paragraphs.

As for the general case, a glance at the block log or drama-associated pages ought to show that there are a number of good uses of external links, e.g., by ArbCom clerks providing permalinks to decisions, so presumably this proposed rule is meant to be about using external links in edit summaries for mainspace edits. I think there might be good reasons to encourage those. I can think of a case involving a copy-paste copyvio from an HIV denialism website in which everyone would have been much happier if the website had been linked in the edit summary. Pasting a URL into the edit summary when you add an item to ==External links== is not a bad idea. It's not unusual for a newbie to have no idea how to make a ref, and to paste a URL to a reliable source into the edit summary out of desperation – obviously better than giving us no idea where the information came from, even though less than perfect.

I'm also not convinced that we have a serious, ongoing problem with refspam via URLs in edit summaries. Almost nobody sees those edit summaries, so what would be the point? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:34, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Also see Wikipedia talk:Reverting#"Do not revert good edits with poor edit summaries or bad usernames.". A permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:50, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

A Case for modifiable Edit Summaries

First, I have noted the contents of discussion, "Enter key should be disabled", above and I'm looking at the various scripts linked there to determine which if any might help me. And indeed, it was precisely a couple of incidents of my miskeying with the Enter key that led to me starting this topic.

However, the point of this post is to ask a couple of questions:

1. Is there any overriding Wikipedia policy or other reason why Edit Summaries cannot themselves be edited subsequent to publication of an article edit?. I can understand why it would be just too much of a headache to keep track of what on Earth were going on if article edits themselves could be published and then subsequently changed - especially if this were possible with edits that were not the latest edit!

However, it does seem to me that there is a persuasive case for being able to edit the article-edit meta-data, including the Edit Summary and "minor edit" attribute.

(a) Notwithstanding the repeated and good advice to FIES (fill in the edit summary), it is clearly something that editors repeatedly fail to do. Were it possible to edit an Edit Summary,

(i) miskeying errors like mine described above would be no big deal.

(ii) it would be possible for an auto script to send a reminder e-mail to editors encouraging them to go back and write a summary if they had failed to do so.

Failing that, if the facility were made available to editors other than the editor who made the article edit:

(iii) any editor who found an edit without an edit summary - should they take the time to determine what the edit was all about - could add their own summary of the edit to correct the situation.

(iv) In this case, it would seem sensible to me to permit only the original editor who made the article edit to make **deletions** from the edit summary (as well, of course, as insertions and changes to the minor edit attribute), whereas other (perhaps only privileged) editors could be allowed to make additions/insertions (only) into the edit summary and changes to the minor edit attribute. This, of course, would allow other editors to make the necessary changes to otherwise empty edit summaries, but prohibit them from removing any, perhaps inadequate, description by the edit author.

(v) It seems to me that it would be unnecessary to keep a visible record of the edit summary changes or to provide any kind of reversion mechanism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hedles (talk • contribs) 20:05, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Summary Edit Mechanism: I can't seem to be able to find how to edit or add a summary after submission. I believe, like me, most of the times editors are focused on the quality of submission and just forget to add summary. Should the recent submission be "undone" and then re-submitted with a summary?Moughera (talk) 10:13, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

The situation is explained at Help:Edit summary#Fixing. --David Biddulph (talk) 11:01, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

Style guide?

Is there no guidance on eg. what grammatical voice is best used for edit summaries? It's common for projects using Git, for example, to instruct contributors to write commit messages in a particular tense: [1] Walkersam (talk) 19:57, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

space

I don't know where else to say it, so I am asking here. It seems that in Watchlist listings, maybe elsewhere where edit summaries come out, there is no space between the page name and the date. This makes it hard to read, especially in page names ending with numbers. Gah4 (talk) 01:42, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Bad separators on multiple pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:00, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Incentive structure for using edit summaries

For some articles, using a minimal or non-existent edit summary is a red flag, but for others, particularly recently the extremely flooded 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic, which has seen abysmal edit summary usage, the incentive structure seems to be the opposite: using a detailed summary draws attention that can lead to reversions, whereas not using one just adds your edit to the pile that's moving too fast for adequate scrutiny. We've added an edit notice pleading for better edit summary usage, but I'm not sure what can be done to change the fundamental incentives. Thoughts welcome. Sdkb (talk) 19:39, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Ο κριστιαν σκεμπις

O Kristian skempis (γεννημένος στις 3 Φεβρουαρίου 1995 ) είναι Ελλάδος επαγγελματίας ποδοσφαίρου και πρώτην παίχτης.

Πρώτην Ελλάδος διεθνής έχει παίξει στο παρελθόν για τον Α.Ο.ΙΑΣΩΝ ΙΛΙΟΥ ,Α.Ε.ΠΟΣΕΙΔΩΝΑΣ ΓΛΥΦΑΔΑ, Α.Ο.ΠΗΓΑΣΟΣ ΠΑΤΗΣΙΩΝ ΠΑΝΑΘΛΗΤΙΚΟΣ ΟΜΙΛΟΣ ΚΩΦΩΝ στην Ελλάδα Kristian skempis (talk) 00:40, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Hello Kristian- Please communicate in English here. Many of us will not be able to understand you otherwise. Eric ^talk 02:28, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Export full set of edit summaries and-or search

In the archives this appears from about 10 years ago:

Searching not supported on principle? Hello, I wonder if there's some kind of policy reason for not allowing searching of edit summaries, or is it just that nobody has bothered to implement it yet. If the latter, is there a place to propose/discuss/help with adding it? Thanks! -- 92.229.120.251 (talk) 9:33 am, 7 September 2009, Monday (10 years, 8 months, 29 days ago) (UTC−4)

I'm interested in whether a FULL set of edit summaries can be exported for a long-history page so that it can be searched. I'm brought to this question by Wikipedia:Usernames for administrator attention, where there is no practical way to search for names similar to those which are in the current reported set; however, names being considered often appear in the edit summaries, and searching in a regex-supported text editor like Notepad++ could provide a practical way to hunt for previous discussions of similar names. Thanks for your thoughts. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:16, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

• Maybe something like this page, but for articles? With a limit >10,000 rather than 500 pages? --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:41, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Ceyockey you might have better luck at the help desk, as I don't think this page is well watched. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 02:45, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Pandemic license

The license is not acceptable. It doesn't give room for change besides the fact that biometrics can now read our retina so in essence all policies are rendered null and void. Wicole23 (talk) 10:11, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

??? Eric ^talk 12:20, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

@Wicole23: This post to a random help talk page is the only edit by your account so we have no idea which page or what content you refer to. Maybe something COVID-19 related but we have thousands of pages and sources about that. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:25, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

{{tl}}

I understand that wikilinks are allowed in edit summaries, but not other things. It would be nice to have {{tl}} for the same reason as wikilinks, so we could mention uses, and possibly changes, to templates. Gah4 (talk) 02:13, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

@Gah4: Mentioning a template, such as Template:tl, in an edit summary is already possible using a standard wikilink. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:13, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

If you want to be fancy then you can write {{[[Template:Example|Example]]}} to produce {{Example}} in an edit summary. I sometimes do it when I'm adding a template to several pages and can copy-paste the edit summary. Otherwise I just write Template:Example, or unlinked {{Example}} which just displays what you wrote, also if you add parameters. PrimeHunter (talk) 06:53, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

I suppose so. But usually when I feel like it, I have already written the {{tl}} in the text in a talk page, and just copy/paste it into the edit summary. Not knowing how edit summary processing works, how hard would it be to convert the {{tl}} into {{tl}}? Gah4 (talk) 09:02, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

@Gah4: {{tl|Example}} in wikitext is just a template call of Template:Tl. It is not a MediaWiki feature but a template made here at the English Wikipedia. MediaWiki is used by thousands of other wikis. Template calls are not expanded in edit summaries and shouldn't be for many reasons. We cannot make {{tl|Example}} work locally. It would require an unlikely MediaWiki change. Expansion of all templates in edit summaries is a non-starter. In theory there could be a customizable feature allowing a wiki to make certain restricted transformations in edit summaries but I don't see it happening. To work permanently including in tools which examine edit summaries and at other wikis which may import a page with page history, the transformed version would have to be saved as the final edit summary. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:24, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes the later suggestion was to transform before saving, which I don't know if is at all possible. I suppose it would be nice to have a keyboard editor so that I could do it at the same time as pasting into the edit summary. Note also that section names are automatically added to edit summaries (at least when you edit a section). Maybe this only happens to me. Gah4 (talk) 18:30, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

The edit summary processing is part of the MediaWiki software, and is nothing that we at English Wikipedia have any control over. To get its behaviour changed would require a request at phab: - but you won't get consensus for it; most likely, it'll be rejected immediately. When structured Discussions was first launched in early 2014, it did expand templates in edit summaries - and that caused a lot of trouble, such that the template-expansion feature was removed very quickly. They're not likely to bring it back.

One problem is that edit summaries cannot be altered - in a normal edit, if you use the wrong template, or it does something that you didn't intend, you can go back and fix it. You can't do that with an edit summary, all you can do is ask an admin to apply WP:REVDEL which erases the whole thing, they can't substitute it with the "correct" edit summary. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:34, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it seems that what I was asking about would be edit summary pre-processing, before it goes into actual processing. It could even be done on my computer, if it knew how to do that. I also noticed that I put links in edit summaries with the underscores still in them. (Never in articles, though, sometimes in talk.) I assume that editors won't be bothered by that, but some might like an automated removal of those. Otherwise, I will probably keep putting them in with the tl, and hope other editors know what I meant. Gah4 (talk) 00:20, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Go to Special:ExpandTemplates, and in the "Input wikitext" box, enter

{{tl|Example}}

and click OK (you can leave the other entry items alone). This produces another box "Result", containing

{{[[Template:Example|Example]]}}

which may be copied and pasted into an edit summary. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:49, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

I would probably do it with sed, or some similar program. But mostly, not that I am trying to be a lazy edit summarist, but that is more steps than I am likely to take to get one done. Thinking more about this, what would be useful would be a user specific, that is, user configurable, edit summary processor. There are a small set of operations that I find useful, likely others would have a different set, so, while a global solution seems nice, it isn't really needed. As noted, I also sometimes get underscores in my links, which doesn't bother me, but if there was a system for easily removing them, I might do it. There are also some transformations for talk page text that could also be useful, but again, user specific. I do wonder, though, am I the only one to have these come up?

It would be possible to make a user script which can transform the edit summary before saving. Wikipedia:User scripts/List has many edit summary scripts but not for this. User scripts require the user to have JavaScript but most users do. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:34, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Userbox

@Elmidae: Regarding your edit, please educate me whether and how having two similar userboxes listed on a page is an issue? I can’t see how it’s a "straight duplicate" or a "non-constructive" addition. I’d like to point out that every parameter of {{User:Idell/editsummary}} is different from the last template of the list, except for what the info says when read out. Furthermore, that template deviates from the usual standard as it’s size is larger and causes formatting issues when grouping templates on a userpage, whereas my version doesn’t. Wikipedians are free to choose one template over the other, as I’m not removing either from the list. Idell (talk) 14:21, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Honestly, in this case I'll do what I generally avoid and just go "whatever". Arguing about whether your personal vanity project is sufficiently different from others' is not on my agenda. Out. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 14:30, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Edit request

Under the section 'Notes for expeirenced users' make the following changes: Change stand for Adminship to run for adminship 139.64.171.63 (talk) 23:47, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

 Done. Article uses "summarize" that hints at American English. The word "adminship" shouldn't be capitalized. ◢  Ganbaruby!  (talk) 01:54, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Correcting summaries

After publishing my addition of a See also link Elections_in_New_Zealand#See_also I noticed View history showed I'd typed in the summary that it was an addition to External links. After clicking undo and deleting what was in the summary box I typed the correct summary and clicked Publish. Not seeing any change in View history I deleted my addition and started to type in the summary box but before I'd finished the page reacted as if I'd clicked Publish and the summary appeared with ddition instead of Addition, and I had to delete and start again. This time everything went OK but it would have been preferable if I'd been able to correct my original mistake. Mcljlm (talk) 16:29, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

@Mcljlm: Do you mean this edit? Don't worry about it. Whilst edit summaries are recommended, they are not mandatory; and nor are they required to accurately describe what you did. Once you've clicked "Publish", an edit summary is set in stone, it cannot be amended - even by admins. An admin may erase an edit summary (or reinstate one that was previously erased), but will only do so if there are genuine reasons to do so. If you make a mistake in an edit summary and you feel that you have to correct it, there is no need to revert the whole edit; instead, edit the section again and make an inconsequential change - such as adding a space at the end of any line except the first and last - then type in your correct edit summary, and then publish. See also WP:ES#Fixing. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:12, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

I wonder if it would be possible in the future for an editor to edit their edit summary. Aiming Guides (talk) 23:35, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Revert of 2/25/22

The edit summary for this edit reads: Need discussion - to gain consensus for changes. Does anyone have a substantive objection to the change? Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 23:09, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose - To remove duplicate info is ok but at least "otherwise, people may question your motives for the edit." should be included as per present texts. Cassiopeia talk 23:17, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

How to stop premature publication due to inadvertently touching the 'enter' key instead of 'backspace' when writing an edit summary

Filing this here to make it more accessible to future editors.

• Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions/Archive 1165#When writing an edit summary, is there a way to stop the enter key generating a "Publish"?

With thanks again to User:Skynxnex, who provided the solution. It works!

𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 13:19, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

For me, I always activate the thing which will alert me when I leave the edit summary blank. But for the case of writing the edit summary half way and accidentally pressed the enter key & publish it, I also face that problem once in a while and haven't found the solution yet. Chongkian (talk) 06:59, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

There's also User:Anomie/nosubmitsummary.js -- John of Reading (talk) 08:02, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

@Chongkian: that is precisely the circumstance that motivated me to request this facility (while typing the edit summary, make a typo, reach for the backspace key to delete and retype it, only to hit the enter key instead - resulting in publication with an incoherent edit note). Skynxnex's code does the job. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:14, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Switch order of initial description?

Looking for consensus to switch the order of the a) and b) parts in the description at the beginning, i.e. change

• "Summaries help other editors by (a) saving the time to open up the edit to find out what it's all about, (b) providing a reason for the edit, and (c) providing information about the edit on diff pages and lists of changes (such as page histories and watchlists).", to
• "Summaries help other editors by (a) providing a reason for the edit, (b) saving the time to open up the edit to find out what it's all about, and (c) providing information about the edit on diff pages and lists of changes (such as page histories and watchlists)."

I expect many directs to this page are via warnings, admonitions, and advice to use an edit summary. I suspect a vast majority of those directions were meant to address a lack of reason given for edits. What say you all? _signed, Willondon (talk) 03:01, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

• Support - "provide a reason" is the primary benefit (the other two follow from that), so it should be listed first. Mitch Ames (talk) 03:23, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
• Support - reason should prevail for the summary. of course the reason has to be followed with any related MoS which contains such rule. Chongkian (talk) 01:21, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

 Done October 4, 2022 - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 15:24, 7 December 2022 (UTC)