On Sun, 5 Sep 2004 10:46:10 +1200, Chris Wood <standsongrace(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
Rules for marking minor edits could go something like
this:
1) All edits by anonymous users are major (same rule as now)
2) A change of 5 words or less, not next to each other or in the same
sentence, is minor.
3) Any number of formatting changes (italics, tables, header levels etc) is
minor.
4) Everything else is major.
To play Devil's Advocate somewhat, let's say I change "Henry the
Eighth had six wives" to "Henry the Eighth had five wives" - major or
minor? According to your rule (2), minor; I would suspect people would
prefer to treat this as major. Of course, if I was a vandal who had
got as far as setting up a user account, I could just tick the minor
box anyway; but what if I was an innocent user who triggered an
automatic test? I'd be annoyed that people weren't going to spot and
review my change...
A somewhat contrived example, but I think it would be a little harder
to define what was 'minor'. Actually, the page you quote goes on to
say:
"...any "real" change, even if it is a single word, is a major edit."
It also links an archived message from Ed Poor
[
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2004-January/008124.html]
which points out the need to be sensitive to other's interpretations
of your edits when choosing whether to mark as minor.
The real challenge, perhaps, would be defining when automatic marking
came into play - perhaps the user could choose between 'major',
'minor', and 'auto' radio buttons, but would they understand, and
would they know how far to trust the 'auto' setting?
--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]