[WikiEN-l] Most useless edit summary ever?

[Ray Saintonge]

Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 10/20/07, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>   
>>> - Your 3 second change causes a flamewar because someone thinks you're
>>> picking on them.
>>>       
>> That's their problem.
>>     
> It's Wikipedia's problem. If your 3 second contribution causes an hour of
> wasted editors' time, it has a net productivity of -59 minutes and -57
> seconds. That's a lot worse than any vandalism.
Only the most enormous bad faith would stick all that drama on a simple 
punctuation or spelling change.  Even if that single one character 
change leads to someone imagining that they have been picked on it is 
totally unrealistic for any editor to be on pins and needles lest 
someone be offended by a clearly minor change.

Sure, it's not uncommon for someone to try to deflect attention from a 
significant change by marking it minor, but that just means that as many 
eyes should be on minor changes as on others, whether or not there is a 
summary.  I have no intention to start writing long descriptions for 
such minor changes, whether Steve likes it or not.

Ec