Help:Edit summary

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Editing overview

Starting a new page

  1. Page name

Images and other uploaded files

  1. Image description page

Special characters

Formatting

  1. Formula
  2. Table
  3. EasyTimeline syntax

Referencing

  1. Link
  2. Piped link
  3. Interwiki linking
  4. Variable
  5. URL

Organizing

  1. Sections
  2. Templates
  3. Category
  4. Redirect
  5. Renaming (moving) a page
  6. Namespace

Saving effort (not having to write something, or copy and paste)

  1. Automatic conversion of wikitext
  2. Editing toolbar

HTML in wikitext

Fixing mistakes and vandalism

  1. Reverting a page to an earlier version

Communicating

  1. Edit summary
  2. Talk page
  3. Edit conflict
  4. Minor edit

Testing When editing an article, there is a small field labeled "Summary" under the main edit-box. It looks like this:


Most projects highly recommend using it to its full capacity, to summarize and/or explain the changes made.

Capacity

The capacity is 1 line of 200 characters, with horizontal scrolling. Attempting to paste more than this results in extra characters falling off. Insertions do not work if the line is full, one has to delete text at the end (or elsewhere) first to make room. For example, an insertion of 10 characters in a line of 195 characters results in the first 5 characters being inserted.

Edit summary

The text in the edit summary box will appear in black italics on the Recent changes page, in the page revision history (see below), and on the Diff page.

In the case of a small addition to an article, it is highly recommended to copy the full text of this addition to the summary field, giving a maximum of information with a minimum of effort. Put ft in front, as an abbreviation of "full text". This way, the reader knows that checking the edit further does not make sense. These kinds of edits with this code ft allow checking of Recent changes, Page history and User contributions (see below) very efficiently, both for the user and for the servers.

If the addition is more than 200 characters, so it does not fit fully in the edit summary box, you should write a short summary of the changes you have introduced into the article. For an addition of, say, 400 characters you can also save time by simply copying that into the summary field. The excess will fall off, and the first 200 characters will usually be acceptable as a crude "summary".

Unfortunately one can copy only one "line" (in the sense of the text until a newline into the edit summary box. The contents of further lines can be pasted at the end of the line. Thus, for example, a bulleted "see also" list is cumbersome to put in the edit summary box. One possible workaround for a new list is putting the list on one line, separated by the asterisks for the bullets, copying it to the edit summary box, and then, in the main edit box, putting the newlines before the asterisks.

In addition to a summary of the change itself, the summary field may also contain an explanation of the change; note that if the reason for an edit is not clear, it is more likely to be reverted, especially in the case that some text is deleted. To give a longer explanation, use the Talk page and put in the edit summary "see Talk".

After saving the page, the summary can not be edited--another reason to avoid spelling errors.

An important guideline is always fill in the summary field. Even a short summary is better than no summary. An edit summary is even more important if you delete any text; otherwise, people may think you're being sneaky. Also, mentioning one change but not another one can be misleading to someone who finds the other one more important; add "and misc." to cover the other change(s).

In addition to the distinction major/minor change, accurate summaries help people decide whether it is worthwhile for them to check a change. We've found that summaries often pique the interest of wikipedians with an expertise in the area. This may not be as necessary for "minor changes", but "fixed spelling" would be nice even then.

In the case of important omissions or errors in the edit summary, you can make a dummy edit just to put the correction in the edit summary.

Section title as automatic edit summary

When you choose to edit a section instead of the entire page (this can be done by using the edit link next to the section title), the section title will automatically appear between \* and *\. This text should be left alone as it makes it easier for editors to see what has been edited. You can add your edit summary after the section title.

Abbreviations

See Edit summary legend for a list of commonly used abbreviations in edit summaries.

"Post a comment" feature

When starting a new thread on a Talk page, optionally the "Post a comment" feature can be used. Then the edit summary is automatically the same as the new section header.

Places where the edit summary appears

The edit summary appears on the diff page, as well as in the following lists:

  • Lists of pages that have been changed, from a selection of pages:
    • from a user's list of watched pages, from a given amount of time ago: Watchlist (logged-in users only)
    • from the pages linked from a given page, from a given amount of time ago and/or up to a given number: Related changes
These show the edit summary of the last edit. Since one is typically interested in all recent changes in these articles, with all edit summaries, these features are used in conjunction with the page histories of the articles shown.
  • List of new pages: shows the edit summary of the creation.

Searching

The Wikimedia search function can not search edit summaries, and they are not indexed by external search engines.

Upload summary

When uploading an image one can supply an upload summary. This serves multiple purposes:

  • as second part of the automatically created edit summary of the upload log (the first part giving the file name)
  • as text in the entry of the image history
  • in the case that the file name of the image is new:
    • as edit summary for the creation of the image page
    • as wikitext for the editable part of the image page, which includes the following possibilities:
      • briefly describe the image
      • provide internal or external links
      • call templates
      • specify one or more categories the image is in

The capacity of the upload summary is one line of 250 characters; in the upload log the last part may fall off, because this can contain 255 characters, including "uploaded "filename"".

Note that there is no preview function to check the code for the links, template calls and category tags, but of course, if needed one can edit the image page after uploading, to correct errors and also to extend the text.

Rendering of wikitext; URLs

Text in edit summaries renders internal links, including piped links, and interwiki links, even when enclosed within <nowiki> and </nowiki>. Therefore, copying wikitext in the edit summary box may be preferable to copying text from the preview, except when one wants to save space.

Other wikitext coding is not interpreted.

When copying an external link from the preview into the edit summary box then, depending on the operating system, the "printable version" is copied, i.e. how it is normally rendered, and in addition, between parentheses, the URL; hence the same information as in the wikitext, but in a different format, and in addition the possible sequential number.