HelpfulEditSummaries

Description

We want to make a real effort to write good, helpful edit summaries. Some of us already do this some of the time, let's try to do it all the time. Exception for your own PersonalPage - do what you want..

How does this build community?

It helps promote Transparency and will ideally be a way to communicate what we are doing. In terms of staff, we can better understand what you did to a particular page- hopefully this will also avoid confusion among all contributors and teach to fish as well.

Imagine too from a new person's perspective: they do not know we are staff and we are changing their wiki page, an extension of their company, doubtless for the better, but clarifying what we are doing or stating our own questions in the summary could go a long way.

Done When

It becomes natural to leave good, helpful edit summaries. Ideally, it becomes part of the culture, it trickles out to ContentTeam, Dev and everyone else at AboutUs.

We can start with all staff having this preference set.

  1. In an effort to do this, you can set your preferences (in editing) to prompt you when leaving a blank edit summary.

Useful Links

Glossary
Special:Preferences

Discussion

Useful edit summaries:

[1]
[2]

Looks great! What will be the steps to get to DoneDone? Obed Suhail

Obed, Can you think of a way to really flush it out? I am going to try and suspect that I might get stuck. :) Kasey 13:07, 27 September 2007 (PDT)

Sounds a good idea but why not have a discussion page that can be added to a site like the warning page, were we can a return to the page and add to watch list and constructively advise the owner or keep a record of ongoing discussions. Atrades 17:48, 27 November 2007

Alex, I think the current thinking is that we can have discussion right on the page, rather than on a different page. What do you think of that idea? And, the idea of edit summaries is that they are tied to specific edtis, so when someone's looking through the page history, they see the reason for each change, rather than needing to try to piece things together by looking at history and a separate discussion. TedErnst (talk) 16:00, 29 November 2007 (PST)

Hi Ted perhaps when we have concerns with a page, we create a new section on the main like you said and call it edit summaries / Discussion Edits and then as you say we can monitor as ongoing. If the site is corrected and resolved then we can remove the discussion and leave it in the historical data. --Atrades 04:42, 30 November 2007 (PST)

Ah, I've got you now. You're talking about if the edit summary is to ask a question or for something that still needs to be resolved. I wonder if I use them that way? Hmm. I think I tend to just fix or change whatever it is I see and the edit summary is explaining what I'm doing, without leaving anything "pending". I dunno. TedErnst (talk) 16:51, 30 November 2007 (PST)

Maybe we have a site wide discussion page, and when a discussion is wanted on a certain page, the discussion page appears, but it is the same page site wide? ~~ MarkDilley

  • I like the idea. Is it going to be like the FeatureDiscussion section on all the Feature Me Nominated pages (all of these discussions are being transcluded on the FeatureMePotentials page)? Is that what you have in mind? Obed Suhail 20:52, 2 December 2007 (PST)

Did you assess that AboutUs staff is writing helpful edit summaries? It would be good to hear that we are! If not, I think it still needs to be a task. My 2 cents. ~~ MarkDilley

My assessment is that it's never actually been a task. It's not been on our prioritized list, so it's not something that's going to be emphasized by anyone during a particular iteration. We bring it up with each other when it comes up, like I did with Steven the other day, and like you did with me when you suggested I set my preferences. Just like AssumeGoodFaith or some of our other values and guidelines, we teach each other when the moment is right. I'm totally fine with being wrong about this. Revert me if you like, and put it on the list, if this is high priority for you, given what we need to show to investors and our core customer, etc. TedErnst (talk)




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