Last modified: 2011-03-13 18:05:05 UTC

Wikimedia Bugzilla is closed!

Wikimedia migrated from Bugzilla to Phabricator. Bug reports are handled in Wikimedia Phabricator.
This static website is read-only and for historical purposes. It is not possible to log in and except for displaying bug reports and their history, links might be broken. See T3687, the corresponding Phabricator task for complete and up-to-date bug report information.
Bug 1687 - Warn if edit summary is blank
Warn if edit summary is blank
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Product: MediaWiki
Classification: Unclassified
Page editing (Other open bugs)
unspecified
Macintosh Mac OS X 10.3
: Lowest enhancement (vote)
: ---
Assigned To: Nobody - You can work on this!
:
Depends on:
Blocks:
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2005-03-11 18:20 UTC by Arnold Reinhold
Modified: 2011-03-13 18:05 UTC (History)
0 users

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


Attachments

Description Arnold Reinhold 2005-03-11 18:20:20 UTC
I think it would be helpful if the editing software issued a popup warning when one submits an edit and the edit summary 
field is blank or only contains a section title, i.e. text bracketed by /* ... */. This would encourage edit summaries and reduce 
the incidence of clicking "save page" when "show preview" is intended (I know I do this from time to time).
Comment 1 Erik Moeller 2005-03-11 21:03:13 UTC
This has been suggested a few times. There are many instances where this would
not be desirable:

* changes to user pages which are private (change intended for myself, no
summary needed)
* simple comments on talk pages (auto-summary often sufficient; people who would
read the summary are often only the ones who will look at the talk page anyway,
as opposed to articles, which are reviewed randomly)
* votes in polls (auto-summary sufficient if poll is set up properly)
* cases where you just want to quickly fix something without bothering to type
much (writing a summary is by no means mandatory)
* creation of new pages

These are just some cases which I can easily anticipate where such a "feature"
would be annoying. I don't really see the point of nagging users. There are more
useful ways to improve edit summaries, e.g., by generating "mini-diffs" for
small edits, or by providing some statistics on the RC page (how much text was
removed/added/changed). Will change to WONTFIX unlses someone can present
plausible arguments why we need this.
Comment 2 Arnold Reinhold 2005-03-11 21:19:28 UTC
The fact that this has been proposed a few time before means others would like this feature. It could be a facility that can be turned off in preferences.  Hopefully 
the majority of editing affects articles, not internal sruff. There edit summaries make it easier for other to decide how to use the time they spend reviewing 
changes. I want this feature to remind me, not to nag others.
Comment 3 Erik Moeller 2005-03-12 02:39:27 UTC
If it's possible to create an entire wikitext parser purely using MediaWiki's
user JavaScript features:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pilaf/Live_Preview

.. then I'm sure it's possible to hack something like that via Monobook.js. I
think this would be a more promising approach than Yet Another Obscure User
Preference.
Comment 4 Zigger 2006-01-16 04:43:00 UTC
See also bug 4630 (force), bug 1307 (automate).

Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.


Navigation
Links