[WikiEN-l] Most useless edit summary ever?

[Robert Rohde]

On 10/16/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 16/10/2007, RLS <evendell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 10/15/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 10/15/07, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Now now. Let's be fair: it *could* have been a null edit.
> > >
> > > If a "null edit" is what I think it is then shouldn't the summary be
> > > "didn't make a change"?
> >
> > I think the point is "made a change" tells us it *wasn't* a null edit.
> :)
>
> Indeed. The summary contained 1 bit (as in, binary digit) of
> information. Not completely useless, but as close as you can get
> without being.


Actually, the software won't save if the content is exactly identical to the
previous version.  So, "made a change" is a prerequisite for saving (even if
the change is as simple as playing with the amount of whitespace in an
article).  In other words, the edit summary still contained no information.

-Robert Rohde