Author: ui2t5v002
Description:
The software should add some info about the edit when someone doesn't fill out
the edit summary field, making patrolling easier on everyone. For instance, if I
make a minor change to an article, changing "5KV" to "5 kV", I just press alt+s
out of habit, without filling out the summary. What would be ideal is if the
software just autogenerated a summary of:
16:15 Electricity (diff; hist) . . Omegatron (Talk) (→Voltage - "5KV" → "5 kV")
In cases of vandalism, this clearly labels it for those patrolling recent
changes or watchlists:
16:15 Politics (diff; hist) . . 192.1.2.123 (Talk) (→Political concerns - "is a
member of the" → "IS GAY!!!")
Since the autogenerated summary is colored, it can be trusted and can prevent
the need to waste bandwidth, time, and server load from checking a lot of diffs
by anon editors that are simple spelling fixes and such.
"But we already have a policy of encouraging edit summaries! They should be
filled in!" So what? A lot of people, especially vandals, simply don't fill
them out. It would be tremendously helpful if the software generated a crude
summary itself in these cases.
This saves precious server resources by processing a diff only once, preventing
the need for many people to load that diff again in the future.
More details and examples at the included URL.
Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28perennial_proposals%29#A_better_description