User talk:WereSpielChequers/BotEditSummary

A few thoughts

Coincidentally, I was bitching and moaning just the other day about edit summaries. I'm not sure why there isn't already an automatic prompt turned on by default. (No doubt if I searched perennial proposals at the Pump I'd find out.) I like Option One. The wording strikes the right tone, and I'd just add a sentence at the end explaining succinctly and gently that edit summaries are helpful to everyone and are the expected norm among established editors. Option Two, manual messages, could be used to contact those users who received the bot message but haven't begun using summaries. (There presumably would be fewer such editors, so it would be more feasible.) As for Option Three, while I have no problem with changing the default option, I can't support the proposed explanation; giving (relative) newbies that information is fine in 99% of cases, but there's that worrisome 1% who are up to no good but so far have evaded serious scrutiny, and this would be like telling a crowd of strangers how to disable the burglar alarm. Rivertorch (talk) 06:22, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Setting the prompt for all new editors would make that crucial first edit just a little more difficult, and we'd lose the ability to identify vandals and newbies by their lack of edit summaries.

Using poop patrol amongst other things I do sometimes come across autopatrolled editors who have a vandalism record that goes back years. But they usually are using edit summaries and I can't remember one reaching 100 edits. So I don't think that a message going to editors who aren't using edit summaries after more than 100 edits will reach many vandals, but even if it did it is explaining that new edits need scrutiny, not that many new editors are vandals. But I'm open to a reword that is both honest and disingeneous in that it doesn't say congrats you've got this far, the odds are that you are a goodfaith editor. ϢereSpielChequers 08:29, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

• Option one seems fine to me. Are you back home now? Johnbod (talk) 14:47, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Not quite back, but will be by the weekend. How was the London meetup? ϢereSpielChequers 15:02, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I was even later than usual, but some new faces, & several old ones! Hope you had a great trip! Johnbod (talk) 15:05, 16 January 2013 (UTC)