There is no official definition of what a "minor change" is. My working definition is "anything that my fellow contributors would agree is minor".
And the operative question is "Would they want to see this on Recent Changes (with 'hide minor changes' in effect?"
I mark these as minor: * Nearly all my grammar and spelling fixes * Copy-edits that DO NOT CHANGE the meaning
I usually don't mark these as minor: * Copy-edits that subtly correct a nuance of POV * Re-writes and re-phrasing which PROBABLY DON'T CHANGE the meaning, but which some other user might think is a sly attempt to inject my own POV (in a controversial article).
Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed
Ed Poor wrote
And the operative question is "Would they want to see this on
Recent Changes (with 'hide minor changes' in effect?"
I have not edited many really contentious pages; but I'd have to say that this doesn't match my take on the issue.
I don't assume that Recent Changes is the main way to see changes to pages in which I have a particular interest. I would myself use my watch list to monitor those. Minor edits do show up there, but there is the phenomenon, for anyone really wanting to pull a fast one, of minor edits masking earlier, larger changes.
Anyway, it probably is good practice to make all changes to a page 'major', if there is substantial interest.
Charles
On Jan 27, 2004, at 10:03 AM, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
I mark these as minor:
- Nearly all my grammar and spelling fixes
- Copy-edits that DO NOT CHANGE the meaning
I usually don't mark these as minor:
- Copy-edits that subtly correct a nuance of POV
- Re-writes and re-phrasing which PROBABLY DON'T CHANGE the meaning, but which some other user might think is a sly attempt to inject my own POV (in a controversial article).
I tend to make a distinction between substantive (major) and non-substantive (minor) edits. Anything that changes the meaning in *any way*, anything that someone could disagree with after but not before, is major, anything else is minor. That way no one is surprised by my changes, and watchers can safely ignore anything marked minor by me. But since that's just *my* rule, and no one's keeping track of what who considers minor, it's only so useful...
Peter
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Poor, Edmund W wrote:
There is no official definition of what a "minor change" is. My working definition is "anything that my fellow contributors would agree is minor".
The semi-intuition that has established itself within the community of Wikipedia regulars as to what a "minor edit" should be, goes somewhat counter to what a newbie would think is intuitively "minor".
The opposite of minor is major. I believe most newbies would think a major edit would be a rewrite of a section of the article or the entire article. Addition of a sentence, although it adds actual information to the article, is not generally called a "major" edit of the article.
What regulars have come to think of as "minor" is what I would call "trivial".
Timwi
that's right. --Optim .'.
--- Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
The semi-intuition that has established itself within the community of Wikipedia regulars as to what a "minor edit" should be, goes somewhat counter to what a newbie would think is intuitively "minor".
The opposite of minor is major. I believe most newbies would think a major edit would be a rewrite of a section of the article or the entire article. Addition of a sentence, although it adds actual information to the article, is not generally called a "major" edit of the article.
What regulars have come to think of as "minor" is what I would call "trivial".
Timwi
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