2017-07-25 14:35 GMT+02:00 Dan Garry <dgarry(a)wikimedia.org>rg>:
By definition, a null edit does not perform any change
at all, and is
therefore not recorded publicly since there's technically nothing to
record. I suspect the only way you could find this kind of information is
in the server logs, and access to those is very tightly restricted for
privacy reasons.
I understand, but I think it would be worth to discuss this *therefore.*
Nulledits are not subjects of privacy protection, they are now in protected
logs only accidentally or for historical reasons. If there is an action
noticed by the server (definitely there is, because it has an effect on the
page, that's why people often do it), it may be logged in the way real
edits are.
This would be also be useful for researchers. One may be interested in the
pattern of null edits, the quantity of them (e.g. is it useful to null edit
20.000 pages because of the change of a template, or is it actual to find
some better way of making the changes visible?).
If there is no reason to exclude these from logs (I don't see any), we
should make them visible. Perhaps not by default, but with a switch.