User:SoWhy/Use edit summaries

Wikipedia has a lot of helpful features that make interacting with other editors easier. Edit summaries are one such feature. Yet some users and even admins do not use them often or at all, mostly because they are convinced that they are not necessary. This essay tries to point out the reasons why they should.

Overview

Wikipedia's success relies on collaboration. No article is completely written by one person alone and many are created when many editors work together. As such, it is important that every editor should try to keep the unnecessary workload for other editors at a minimum, so they in turn have more time to concentrate on improving the encyclopedia. As such, any action that serves to create more unnecessary workload or distraction will effectively result in those editors having less time to concentrate on the important things.

But what do edit summaries have to do with it?

Edit summaries are, as the name suggests, a way to describe the changes you did to the page to other people. It allows them to understand your edits without having actually to read them, which is both a courtesy to them and a time-saver.

Admin actions

This is especially important for admins whose actions often need explaining (for example, if one removes a tag (like a speedy one), one should explain to everyone why they did so). Admins are expected to be examples to other users and their actions should be understandable to everyone easily, with no need to check their actual edit.

Common arguments

This section attempts to collect a number of common arguments people use to justify not using edit summaries and attempts to refute them.

"People can just view the diff to see what I did!"

Yes, they can. That is, in most cases, they can. The software that Wikipedia uses is great but it's not perfect. Sometimes the diff-feature is unable to detect the changes correctly, not showing them at all or marking complete paragraphs of text as changed when only formatting changes happened. In those cases, not using an edit summary forces the user reviewing the edit to check the complete content of both revisions just to find out all you did was to remove a comma.

Also, remember that not everyone who reads and edits Wikipedia is familiar with all its features. Many casual readers will find the history page eventually if they want to know why something has changed but they are unlikely to find the option to compare one or multiple revisions immediately. Not telling them why you changed something will make live harder for them and thus possibly drive them from the project.

"I only work on articles where people know me!"

This is a wiki and as such no article has a constant group of editors. There is always someone who does not know what you do to those articles and as such you should help them understand. After all, every time you do not use an edit summary, another editor might be forced to view the diff of your edit. And with every time they have to read diffs because they cannot understand the nature of your edit, it costs them time they could otherwise use to improve the encyclopedia.

"I used 'This is a minor edit', why isn't that enough?"

Minor edits are a way to allow others to filter certain changes that are not changing content. But they do not serve to describe what exactly was done. Additionally, Help:Minor edit offers no strict explanation as to what exactly constitutes a "minor edit". As such, there are multiple definitions of minor edits, often varying from editor to editor.

As such, just marking the box "This is a minor edit" will not be helpful. Edit summaries are actually more important in those cases. Since formatting changes or similar edits are often the kind of edits that trip up the diff-feature (see above), such edits are much harder to retrace by other editors. Even if the diff-feature works, spotting a changed comma or a removed symbol in a huge paragraph is a tedious task that just takes up time of editors who could do something better with their time.

"Why should I use edit summaries when section headings show where I made changes?"

Sections just show where the change happened but not what the change was. It may make it easier for others to know where they should look for the change but they still have to tediously check the diff to find it.

"I could just lie and use edit summaries to deceive others"

Yes, yes you could. Edit summaries contain the inherent chance of misuse by deceiving those who trust your summary of the changes. But that requires them to trust you and usually you have to earn this trust first before they trust you. But the fact that you use edit summaries does not mean that people cannot check the actual edit you made and usually, someone will. But if a hundred people notice your edit and only five check your diff anyway, not using the edit summary forces the other 95 to check it as well. As such, it's unlikely that one can deceive people just by using a fake edit summary.