On 11/21/02 5:52 AM, "Erik Moeller" e.moeller@fokus.gmd.de wrote:
There's a new preference in CVS now to have edits minor by default, as per someone's request on wikipedia-l. This may be helpful for copyeditors. I haven't added it to the other Language* files (except for German) yet.
Please take that out.
Marking edits minor by default is not the right behavior. We want to see clueless newbie edits by default, and for those of us who hide minor edits (the only way minor edits are used right now) that would make that not possible.
What I've seen work is to make summaries mandatory for non-minor edits.
Otherwise we should not change the default settings.
Hello,
Is there an agreed definition of what is or is not a "minor edit"? I haven't been able to find one, so I've just been guessing. I suspect that most people are just guessing. So if it's such a big deal to people, perhaps there should be clearer guidelines on what should or should not be marked as a minor edit. Perhaps the "minor edit" box should have a link by it, with the text "What is a minor edit?", linking to a page of such guidelines.
As for naughty people sneaking in major changes by pretending that they are minor, it wouldn't make any difference what the defaults were. Even with the "minor edit" box not ticked by default, all someone has to do is click on it - hardly a difficult task for our hypothetical naughty person! If anyone is worried about people doing this, the only thing they can do is deselect the option to hide minor edits from the "Recent changes" page.
Oliver
+-------------------------------------------+ | Oliver Pereira | | Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science | | University of Southampton | | omp199@ecs.soton.ac.uk | +-------------------------------------------+
Oliver Pereira wrote:
Is there an agreed definition of what is or is not a "minor edit"? I haven't been able to find one, so I've just been guessing. I suspect that most people are just guessing. So if it's such a big deal to people, perhaps there should be clearer guidelines on what should or should not be marked as a minor edit. Perhaps the "minor edit" box should have a link by it, with the text "What is a minor edit?", linking to a page of such guidelines.
I shudder at the thought of having yet another rule. Ultimately, people's common sense should prevail. If I'm reviewing changes to an article that interests me as an editor, I'll look at all the changes both major and minor. If I'm reviewing it as a reader, I'll stick to the major changes.
Eclecticology
|From: Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net |X-Accept-Language: en-us |Sender: wikipedia-l-admin@wikipedia.org |Reply-To: wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org |Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 14:52:06 -0800 | |Oliver Pereira wrote: | |>Is there an agreed definition of what is or is not a "minor edit"? I |>haven't been able to find one, so I've just been guessing. I suspect that |>most people are just guessing. So if it's such a big deal to people, |>perhaps there should be clearer guidelines on what should or should not be |>marked as a minor edit. Perhaps the "minor edit" box should have a link by |>it, with the text "What is a minor edit?", linking to a page of such |>guidelines. |> |I shudder at the thought of having yet another rule. Ultimately, |people's common sense should prevail. If I'm reviewing changes to an |article that interests me as an editor, I'll look at all the changes |both major and minor. If I'm reviewing it as a reader, I'll stick to |the major changes. | |Eclecticology | |
If you don't think it's worth anyone's while to know about the edit, it's minor.
Tom P. O88
Oliver Pereira wrote:
Is there an agreed definition of what is or is not a "minor edit"? I haven't been able to find one, so I've just been guessing. I suspect that most people are just guessing. So if it's such a big deal to people, perhaps there should be clearer guidelines on what should or should not be marked as a minor edit. Perhaps the "minor edit" box should have a link by it, with the text "What is a minor edit?", linking to a page of such guidelines.
That's not a bad idea. For users who are not naughty, I think it serves as a way to flag "This was substantial enough that other people should look at it." I personally think that almost anything other than typo or minor grammar fixes should not be flagged as minor edits. I only check minor edit if I think that really, no one would want to be bothered to know that I made the change.
--Jimbo
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