On 10/17/07, Christiano Moreschi
<moreschiwikiman(a)hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
In all fairness, this is probably a consequence of RFA's culture of "must
use 100 percent edit summaries before passing"! People quite often write
entirely useless edit summaries, aided by the prompt in Preferences, simply
to pass RFA. I know I did. Post RFA, however, I realized that updating
articles with edit summaries such as "+info" is beyond banal, so I turned
the damn prompt off. Now most of my real contributions are without edit
summaries. This is, I think, a good thing. Tasting the forbidden fruit
labelled "No edit summary" keeps Wikipedia exciting.
Hmm, I got into the habit when I was considering submitting an RfA. I think
on the whole it's a good habit, even if I tend to use the same summaries
over and over: "create stub", "rd", "recat",
"tyop", "c/e". I find it
frustrating when people (particularly anons) don't write anything, as it
makes it much harder to
gauge intent. When someone changes a population figure
with no summary, I suspect vandalism. A simple "update pop" would help
me believe they're acting in good faith.
Steve
One thing about the whole RfA culture I've had trouble understanding is
that the
assertion that edit summaries are more important in major than minor changes.
Even if an editor is an editor I trust and work well with, if an edit is major
I'm likely to look at it in detail. But if an editor I trust marks an edit as
minor and I'm even vaguely familiar with the editor I generally will not. So
keeping track of what is happening in the minor edits is helpful. Furthermore,
many minor edits it isn't always obvious what change was made. For
example, if someones replace a comma with a period it is hard to see
that change just
looking at the difs, even with the helpful colored differences displayed.
However, an edit summary of "swap comma with period in 2nd sentence" or
something like that makes it much easier to follow.