Wikipedia talk:Canned edit summaries

Works great in theory

Works great in theory but unfortunately on RC patrol, it has been my observation that the vast majority of canned edit summaries do not accurately describe the changes that have been made. I would go so far as to say most uses of canned edit summary by IPs are an attempt to conceal vandalism. Therefore, I don't believe that canned edit summaries are a net positive.– Gilliam (talk) 12:21, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Completely agree... and I've personally tried to convince WMF to remedy the issue, but to no avail: phab:T72349. Perhaps we could open an RfC to establish consensus, so we can at least have that to show — MusikAnimal ^talk 18:09, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Well, I guess that phab was about adding a tag, which we've done ourselves via an edit filter. I'm still with you, though, as it seems that perhaps users think they have to select one of the buttons, so they just randomly pick one and save their edit. I'd argue no edit summary is better than a misleading one. — MusikAnimal ^talk 18:11, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

To editors MusikAnimal and Gilliam: - Why not have the first option be "[Leave the edit summary empty]" if that would be more helpful? — Geekdiva (talk) 03:11, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

The *other* canned edit summaries

In Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets under Editing, the first option is, "Add two new dropdown boxes below the edit summary box with some useful default summaries." I have had this enabled for a while.

1. Is this particular pref discussed anywhere that we can point to in the See also section of this document or otherwise use to disambiguate it?
2. I rarely use the default summaries from Special:Preferences' editing gadgets because the verbs aren't past tense like the ones mentioned in this document are (e.g., Fixing vs. Fixed), which therefore I wish I could use. I'm not saying we should merge the two sets necessarily, but perhaps some cross-standardization could be considered.

Due to my real-life limitations often getting in the way of finishing things myself, it might turn out that all I can do is make this post, but I'll see how far I can take this. If I can't make it back here, I apologize, and hopefully someone else will build on my suggestions. And yes, this is canned text. Heh. Thanks! — Geekdiva (talk) 03:45, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

I've added a section describing this feature. Wingedsubmariner (talk) 15:16, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

"Canned edit summary" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Canned edit summary and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 March 10#Canned edit summary until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 04:33, 10 March 2022 (UTC)