Last modified: 2013-12-13 13:34:35 UTC

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Bug 10723 - Give users the ability to edit their own edit summaries
Give users the ability to edit their own edit summaries
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Product: MediaWiki
Classification: Unclassified
Page editing (Other open bugs)
unspecified
All All
: Lowest enhancement with 1 vote (vote)
: ---
Assigned To: Nobody - You can work on this!
:
Depends on:
Blocks:
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2007-07-27 16:42 UTC by Eric
Modified: 2013-12-13 13:34 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

See Also:
Web browser: ---
Mobile Platform: ---
Assignee Huggle Beta Tester: ---


Attachments

Description Eric 2007-07-27 16:42:42 UTC
I think a good enhancement to the page history view would be to give users the option to change their own edit summaries. This would be useful in cases where editors forget to provide a summary or wish to fix errors or otherwise improve their summaries.
To avoid conflicts, only the person who made the edit should be able to change the summary--and it may be a good idea to require that the editor be logged in.
So that other users could see the changes to the edit summary if they want, I'd design the "edit summary edit" feature to generate an indicator next to the summary if it has been changed. The indicator could simply be a number that shows how many versions of the summary exist. If possible, the number might link to an edit summary edit history.
I have no knowledge of how difficult this would be to implement, but I think it would be worth the effort if it can be achieved without too much trouble. As mentioned in bug (enhancement request) no. 1279, some editors achieve this by doing a dummy edit, but this only works if there's been no intervening edit. That same enhancement request mentions an alternative that I have expanded upon here.
Thanks in advance for either considering this enhancement or telling me why it wouldn't work.
--Eric
Comment 1 Danny B. 2007-07-27 17:46:51 UTC
User can see the preview of the summary at the moment when previewing the page so he has enough chances to tweak the summary as much as he likes.

Also editing of summaries could cause misunderstandings if their meaning was changed, therefore I don't think this is a good idea.

On the other hand, sysops or bcts could have such right to overwrite the summary eg. to remove bad words, personal attacks or personal data, but still I'm not sure if changing of history is the right way.
Comment 2 Alexandre Emsenhuber [IAlex] 2007-07-27 17:58:33 UTC
(In reply to comment #1)
> 
> On the other hand, sysops or bcts could have such right to overwrite the
> summary eg. to remove bad words, personal attacks or personal data, but still
> I'm not sure if changing of history is the right way.
> 
It will be possible to hide it when the new Specialpage [[Special:RevisionDelete]] will work.
Comment 3 Eric 2007-08-16 16:43:23 UTC
Hi all-
New here and not sure what I'm doing, but I re-opened this bug from a status of "resolved, WONTFIX" because--taking the wild guess that "WONTFIX" means my suggestion won't be considered--I'd like to know why. I hope I'm not out of line re-opening it. I wrote an e-mail to the person who I think assigned it the "WONTFIX" resolution, but haven't heard back (brion@wikimedia.org, August 8). I'd like to know whether my idea is feasible or not. I think my original submission addresses the concern Danny expresses in Comment 1.
Thanks. --Eric
Comment 4 Brion Vibber 2007-08-16 17:33:51 UTC
We have no intention of allowing records of past actions to be altered by end users.
Comment 5 Eric 2007-08-16 18:25:17 UTC
Hi Brion- Thanks for responding. Maybe I didn't write it clearly, but I think the second part of the second paragraph of my original post covers the record issue. Still, as I say above, I don't know if an edit summary history could be implemented easily. --Eric
Comment 6 Casey Brown 2007-08-16 20:21:56 UTC
Ummm.... It doesn't matter. :-)  Brion has the final say on everything to do with MediaWiki.  The developers won't be working on this bug any time in the near future.
Comment 7 Eric 2007-08-18 18:40:52 UTC
I wasn't polling users to see if they thought my comment mattered, and I'm not interested in who has "final say" in anything. Just curious to know if the idea could be implemented, and, if not, why not. --Eric

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