Help:Dummy edit

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Dummy edit [edit]

Main article: w:Help:Dummy edit

A dummy edit is a change in wikitext that has little or no effect on the rendered page, but saves a useful dummy edit summary. The dummy edit summary can be used for text messaging, and correcting a previous edit summary such as an accidental marking of a previous edit as "minor" (see Help:Minor edit). Text messaging via the edit summary is a way of communicating with other editors. Text messages may be seen by dotted IP number editors who don't have a user talk page, or editors who haven't read the subject's talk page, if it exists. Each edit summary can hold 250 bytes; the input box for an edit summary is limited to 200 characters. A dummy edit should be checkboxed "minor" by logged-in editors (except when the purpose of the dummy edit is to correct a previous edit accidentally marked "minor").

Examples:

Changing the number of newlines in the edit text. Changing a space to a line break in running text or vice versa, for example, or adding or removing a single blank line after a header. Adding an extra blank line where there was none may add a paragraph break, which is not a dummy edit. Adding newlines to the end of the article will not save as a dummy edit (see below).
Changing the number of spaces. Changing one space character to two or more (or vice versa) also has no effect on the rendered page. Multiple space characters always render as a single space, unless the line begins with a leading space.

Null edit [edit]

Main article: w:Wikipedia:Purge

A null edit occurs if a page save is made when the wikitext is not changed, which is useful for refreshing the cache. A null edit will not record an edit, make any entry in the page history, in Recent Changes, etc., and the edit summary is discarded.

Effects and purpose [edit]

The key purpose of null edits is that they update category pages for categories transcluded via templates.

If a transcluded template has added or removed a category since it was last transcluded then purge will not update the category page, but a null edit will – see Help:Category#Using templates to populate categories.

Examples [edit]

Opening the edit window and saving: A section edit save is sufficient, but can sometimes result in a dummy edit.
Adding newlines only to the end of the article and saving: This is also a null edit.
Clicking the edit button and putting some text in the edit summary: This is also a null edit.