Wikipedia talk:Every edit must stand on its own feet

Single vs Multiple edits

Is it worth adding another caution to this? Multiple edits are much easier to check and maintain than large multi-line edits. In particular, when a blank line is added/removed to (eg) separate/join paragraphs, the 'diff' will show the whole paragraph as changed, whereas the text may not have been changed at all. (I normally state 'no text changes' where I know this to be the case.) I realise this is at a tangent to the main thrust of the essay, but the natural reaction to it might be editors making few large changes rather than many incremental changes. EdJogg (talk) 09:35, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

If you feel that, fine: just put a section showing the pros and cons of both. ChrisDHDR 13:09, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

No, I'll let you add it if you wish. From a distance I thought I was aware of the edit sequences and discussions that (presumably) lead to this essay, although I kept well out of the way. Having seen your change to my article edit it is clear that I don't fully understand the problem you're addressing, so I don't think I am in a position to comment, and I'll leave you to it. -- EdJogg (talk) 16:09, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

I've added some stuff which I took out of my user page (and rejigged). Have a look and see what you think. SimonTrew (talk) 20:49, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

That is many, many times better, and thank you for incorporating the gist of my earlier comments. EdJogg (talk) 21:22, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with this essay

Especially the 'make several small edits rather than one large edit' part. I find it quite annoying to look through the history of an article, see someone has edited it about 20 times in a row, and then discover that those are all trivial minor edits that could easily have been combined into one. I would advise the opposite of this advice: group your edits together if you can. Too many edits clutters up the history; and while we shouldn't worry about performance, it seems better to reduce the load on the servers by not creating unnecessary revisions.

I'm not sure I even agree with the 'every edit must improve the article' message. While, as I've just said, I think edits should be combined where possible, there are times when it's simply easier to make a large change as a series of smaller changes; and in that case, I don't think every single edit has to improve the article, as long as the overall change does. If I make edits A, B, C and D to an article over the course of about two minutes, it doesn't really matter if any of the individual edits make the article briefly worse as long as the total sequence ABCD improves it. Robofish (talk) 22:50, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

I would add from my own experience that I prefer the incremental approach, my two cents ... Risk Engineer (talk) 12:52, 11 October 2017 (UTC)