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June 4, 2006
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Minor Edits
 
MinorEdits can make the collaboration between authors and readers more efficient, especially in a community that is centered around the RecentChanges activity. Sometimes MinorEdits are misused and become counter-productive, so it is possible to turn them off (UseSmallCorrection).

The components:

  • A checkbox in the EditForm ("I'm just doing minor edits") let's the author classify his changes as "minor" which means "you normally need not bother to read or check what I have done".
  • When RecentChanges are displayed, the MinorEdits to not show. If someone is interested to see and check them, he must add an parameter or put a link containing the parameter into the RecentChanges page.

Considerations

To have and to use MinorEdits can improve the quality of RecentChanges, especially there is the need to do a lot of small corrections, for example unify the layout of many pages or introduce a new category. If the RecentChanges would show all these changes then it would be tiresome and boring for the readers to get at the really interesting contributions.

On the other hand not each and every minor edits should be hidden from the readers, because it is important to give examples of this work. It is important to show that one can rework things, improve layout or remove typos. So it is good to have some of these activities in RecentChanges, they just should not dominate (<20% might be desirable, <5% undesirable).

There are also contributors who misuse MinorEdits for various reasons. They make substancial changes and hide them which is unacceptable. Sometimes it helps to discuss this, sometimes one one has to turn this feature off (UseSmallCorrection) or limit its range (CheckEditLimit; user often dislike this).


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