[WikiEN-l] Most useless edit summary ever?

[Christiano Moreschi]

> Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 08:50:34 -0500
> From: charlottethewebb at gmail.com
> To: wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Most useless edit summary ever?
> 
> 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.
> 
> I think "minor edit"[1] is beyond useless. I mean, there's a check-box
> for saying that.
> 
> [1] e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rypin_County&diff=prev&oldid=162173174
> 
> —C.W.

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.

Moreschi

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