Ability to append additional edit summaries to one’s own edits
Problem: Currently, once you write your edit summary and push the "Publish changes" button, you can't make changes to your edit summary. But what happens if you forget to mention something important? What happens if you make a typo (this one is meant for the typo police like me)? You're stuck with that edit summary for eternity.
Proposed solution: I suggest that we give editors the ability to append additional edit summaries to their edits— not other people’s, only their own. This would be a lifesaver for editors who forget something important in their edit summary (e.g. attribution) or who make typos-- if you're anything like me, you know how painful typos are. Now, to address the word 'almost' in the previous section, I don't think we should make this feature available to just anybody. As someone who mainly does counter-vandalism, I know that there is the potential of vandals abusing this feature. To address this, we would make the feature available only to those who are auto-confirmed and higher. This could be a tool that users enable/disable in their Preferences.
Who would benefit: Almost every editor-- more on the 'almost' in the next section.
A related and very frequent situation is forgetting to write an edit summary. For such cases, a more or less established convention is doing an "empty edit" with just the edit summary. One way to implement the suggested feature would be to take advantage of this existing convention and have empty edits modify the summary of the previous edit (assuming the edit is yours, of course). Another approach, perhaps more modern and intuitive, would be to have some sort of [edit summary] button next to your latest edit, that would open a dialog similar to the [thank] button. Sophivorus (talk) 00:51, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think this mean log of editing note changes being needed to avoid dispute. And I don't think log of changes in log is something productivity, even though I see the use case here. C933103 (talk) 06:51, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hello there, and thanks for taking the time to write this proposal. We've discussed as a team and found that the part asking for edit summaries to be editable would be declined for community alignment and perennial reasons, but the part about appending additional summaries could be in scope https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T210327 Do you mind editing this proposal to be about that part only? If so, this can get accepted for the next phase to be voted on. Thanks so much, NRodriguez (WMF) (talk) 00:39, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Some people should be able to edit the summary and reasons by users and admins, just to fix the broken archive links (talk page) or forget to edit summary. Thingofme (talk) 15:09, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
{{weak support}} only if it’s to append, not to edit existing summaries, and that it will be obvious for the website viewer what was part of the original summary and what wasn’t. -Gifnk dlm 2020From Middle English Wikipedia 📜📖💻 (talk) 15:24, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Long overdue. Even experienced users such as myself can make a mistake in an edit summary, perhaps with an incorrect link [1]. My only suggestion would be to put some limit on it, to prevent misuse (e.g. edit summaries can only be changed before there's another edit). Voice of Clam (talk) 15:19, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: complicating the page history interface (whether by viewing these additional summaries or seeing options everywhere to add additional summaries) is a cause of concern for making Wikimedia friendly to new volunteers. There's lots of misuse potential to be thought about, whereas the current dummy edit situation is not that complicated and can cause very few problems. The only genuine substantial use case where there's no alternative is in fixing a typo or link in an edit summary, but this cannot be addressed without causing serious misuse problems (there is no set of editors that can be trusted in altering their edit summaries without record, and "edit summary histories" circles back to my interface complication concerns). If you really mess up on an edit summary (like by accidentally pasting your phone number rather than the text you intended to copy) then you can get it revdelled. — Bilorv (talk) 10:50, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Potential misuse and havoc. When someone is investigating something, they are not expected to comeback everytime to see if an user altered the edit summary. This is unfeasible and non-transparent, despite genuine intentions of fixing a typo or adding extra comments. Additional dummy edit, revdel offers effective alternatives and transparency. — DaxServer (t · c) 11:19, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose coming from a coding background & specifically from what I've learned with commit messages... yes, sometimes there are times you want to change, but I'd rather stick with the integrity of whatever message is left. I'm also worried about the the potential misuse that Bilorv mentions. = paul2520 (talk) 23:28, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support I like the idea of amending an edit summary ala Git, which is something I've been pondering for a while. I would rather this option be added as a gadget which could be optionally enabled, to address cluttering issues. Also, the original edit summary should always be viewable somehow. Asukite (talk) 20:20, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support I would like to have 5-10 minutes after editing during which I could change the summary. This may not be a change to the already recorded text, but an addition. There are many signs in the summary field, why not add new stacks until the field is exhausted. Sunpriat (talk) 00:52, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Done What do you think? HelenDegenerate (talk) 02:43, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
Support Danbloch (talk) 19:17, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
Strong support Tranhaian130809 (talk) 11:31, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
Weak support: I think this could be a nice feature if it was limited to maybe one hour after the edit → «« Man77 »» [de] 13:13, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
Oppose per KingAntenor. I think the disadvantages overcome the advantages. -Gifnk dlm 2020 From Middle English Wikipedia 📜📖💻 (talk) 07:46, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
22:25, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
