Help:Edit summary

See Wikipedia:Editing policy § Be helpful: explain for the relevant Wikipedia policy.

See WP:Edit summary legend if you are already familiar with this page.

"WP:ES" redirects here. For encyclopedic style, see Wikipedia:Writing better articles § Information style and tone.

An edit summary is a brief explanation of an edit to a Wikipedia page. Summaries help other editors by (a) providing a reason for the edit, (b) saving the time to open up the edit to find out what it's all about, and (c) providing information about the edit on diff pages and lists of changes (such as page histories and watchlists).

This is an information page. It is not an encyclopedic article, nor one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines; rather, its purpose is to explain certain aspects of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices. It may reflect differing levels of consensus and vetting.

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This page in a nutshell: When editing, be sure to summarize your contributions.

How to add an edit summary

To add a summary, type in the text entry field in the Edit summary box. In the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor, it looks like this:

In the 2010 wikitext editor, the box looks like this:

Edit summary (Briefly describe your changes)

 

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Edits should be explained

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According to the consensus policy, all edits should be explained (unless the reason for them is obvious)—either by clear edit summaries, or by discussion on the associated talk page. It is a good practice to provide a meaningful summary for every edit, especially when reverting (undoing) the actions of other editors or deleting existing text; otherwise, people may question your motives for the edit. In appropriate circumstances, a summary can be quite brief ("ce" and "rvv" for example).

Accurate summaries help other contributors decide whether they want to review an edit, and to understand the change should they choose to review it. Edits without edit summaries are more likely to be reverted incorrectly because they provide no explanation or rationale for the change. Editors should not revert an otherwise good edit because of a missing or confusing edit summary; good editors may simply have forgotten, or a confusing edit summary may have been the result of an autofill mishap. (If the edit summary itself violates privacy or other policies, see the Fixing section below.) However, realistically, when a major edit (e.g., addition or deletion of a substantial amount of article text, or a substantial rewrite) doesn't have an edit summary, some busy editors might not assume good faith and revert the change without evaluating it properly. Providing an edit summary helps prevent that kind of error.

Summaries are less important for minor changes (which means generally unchallengeable changes, such as spelling or grammar corrections), but a brief note like "fixed spelling" is helpful even then.

To avoid accidentally leaving edit summaries blank, registered editors can select "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary" on the Editing tab of the user preferences.

How to write an edit summary

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See also: Wikipedia:Edit summary legend

• Summarize. Summarize the change, even if only briefly; even a short summary is better than no summary.
• Explain. Give reasons for the change, if you think other editors may be unclear as to why you made it. If you believe a Wikipedia policy or guideline justifies the change then you may include a link to it in your explanation.
• Abbreviations. Abbreviations should be used with care. They can be confusing for new contributors. For an explanation of some commonly used abbreviations, see this edit summary legend.
• Expand on important information. Readers who see only the summary might not get the entire picture. Prevent misunderstanding: If an edit requires more explanation than will fit in the summary box, post a comment to the article's talk page to give more information, and include "see talk" or "see discussion page" in the edit summary.
  • If you are copying text within Wikipedia, you must at least put a link to the source page in the edit summary at the destination page.
• Talk pages. When editing talk pages, consider reflecting the gist of your comment in the edit summary; this allows users to check Recent changes, Page history and User contributions (see below) very efficiently.

What to avoid in edit summaries

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• Avoid misleading summaries. Mentioning one change but not another one can be misleading to someone who finds the other one more important. You could add something like "and misc." to cover the other changes.
• Avoid vagueness. While edit summaries can be terse, they should still be specific. Providing an edit summary similar to "I made some changes" is functionally equivalent to not providing a summary at all.^{[note 1]}
• Avoid long summaries. Edit summaries are not for explaining every detail, writing essays about "the truth", or long-winded arguments with fellow editors. For discussions, you should use the talk page.
• Avoid inappropriate summaries. You should explain your edits, but without being overly critical or harsh when editing or reverting others' work. This may be perceived as uncivil, and cause resentment or conflict. Explain what you changed, citing the relevant policies, guidelines, or principles of good writing, but do not target others in a way that may come across as a personal attack.
• Avoid incivility. Snide comments, personal remarks about editors, and other aggressive edit summaries are explicit edit-summary "don'ts" of the Wikipedia Civility policy.

Warning: be careful of what you write in edit summaries. Inappropriate edit summaries may be used as evidence against you in behavioral complaints. This applies particularly to uncivil and deliberately misleading edit summaries.

Use of edit summaries in disputes

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Proper use of edit summaries is critical to resolving content disputes. Edit summaries should accurately and succinctly summarize the nature of the edit, especially if it could be controversial. If the edit involves reverting previous changes, it should be marked as a revert ("rv") in the edit summary.

Avoid using edit summaries to carry on debates or negotiation over the content. This creates an atmosphere where the only way to carry on discussion is to revert other editors! If you notice this happening, start a section on the talk page and place your comments there. This keeps discussions and debates away from the article page itself. For example:

reverted edits by User:Example, see talk for rationale

As with any other Wikipedia space, do not express opinions of other users in edit summaries.

Fixing

After you publish the page, you cannot change the edit summary, so be careful with it, particularly if you are in a heated content dispute – do not write things you will regret.

If you make an important omission or error in an edit summary, you can correct this by making a dummy edit (a change in the page with no visible effects), and adding further information in the dummy edit's summary.

In the extreme case of an edit summary containing certain kinds of harmful content, the summary can be deleted on request. They may be removed from public view by administrators using revision deletion; such edit summaries remain visible to administrators. In even more limited circumstances, the entire edit may be oversighted, leaving it and its edit summary visible only to the handful of users with the Oversight permission.

Notes

1. In some cases not providing an edit summary is better than providing a vague one. In particular, avoid creating a redirect with an edit summary like "Created redirect" since that is less descriptive than the automatic summary that will be provided if the field is left blank.