Help talk:Minor edit/Archive 2

I've always wondered - if someone has their preferences to not display minor edits, will the last major edit for a page still appear in their watchlist or will that page not appear in their watchlist at all? --Jpcase (talk) 21:56, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

The page doesn't appear at all, unless they have enabled "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist. This confuses many users. I recently added mention of it to Help:Watching pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:07, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Sorry for the late reply and thanks for the answer! Perhaps an explanation could be added to this Help page as well? --Jpcase (talk) 03:30, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

This edit request to Help:Minor edit has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

You didn't mentioned about the main big caste of Mianchannu residing on the bank of River Ravi and "Maher Dullu". It can be verifiable. Thanks and warm regards

Khuram Dullu. Khuram2703 (talk) 11:15, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Not done: as you have asked in the wrong place, this page is only to discuss improvements to Help:Minor edit.
If you want to suggest a change, please request this on the talk page of the relevant article, in the form "Please replace XXX with YYY" or "Please add ZZZ between PPP and QQQ".
Please also cite reliable sources to back up your request, without which no information should be added to, or changed in, any article. - Arjayay (talk) 14:42, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

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i wantmore info about the content in earth. have tried a lot

Keya sbksug (talk) 13:02, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Not done: as you have asked in the wrong place, this page is only to discuss improvements to Help:Minor edit.
Your question is unclear, but I suggest you try asking at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science - Arjayay (talk) 13:47, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

This edit request to Help:Minor edit has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

<<long request removed>> 131.170.90.3 (talk) 01:51, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Help:Minor edit. Please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:34, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Currently, it is considered a "major edit" to add or remove tags and templates, which flag problems in the quality of an article; however, I do not think that giving just a heads-up would ever be major.

The main thing is that we are not editing articles themselves but rather pointing out mistakes in areas, which does not sound very much and therefore minor. We are not changing content (which would be major), but we are giving willful contributors a more obvious opportunity to help.

I am probably not the only person who thinks of that, and we may have our own perspectives as to whether it is "major" or "minor". Let me hear some opinions from you and find out how it really shall be. Gamingforfun³⁶⁵ (talk) 23:35, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

In my opinion, that should indeed be a non-minor edit. A minor edit is not necessarily one that does not change article content. After all, not all talk page or policy page edits are minor. A minor edit is one where it is unlikely that any other editor would disagree with it. Adding or removing a tag that says, for example, that there is a WP:POV problem, would by definition be about a disagreement. Therefore, it should not be considered a minor edit. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:55, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

See also Help_talk:Minor_edit/Archive_1#When_to_mark_an_edit_as_minor. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 05:59, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

I was actually looking for a reason to keep it and not change it; this helped. Thanks. Gamingforfun³⁶⁵ (talk) 21:43, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Article moves can be quite contentious. It seems better to have them flagged as major edits, or at least give the moving editor the option to choose whether it is minor or major. Gap9551 (talk) 17:51, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree with you, and I remember having discussed this issue at the Village Pump some time ago. It's a software issue, rather than a policy issue, but I think the default for moves should be non-minor. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:28, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Does swapping out one word with another count as minor, when the words are synonyms? I'm changing "engagement" to "fight" in an article and wondering whether to check the box. --Rightfulmongoose (talk) 03:25, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

It's a subjective call, and there is no way to generalize the answer. There are lots of cases where switching to a simpler synonym is indeed a minor edit. But there can also be cases where an apparent synonym changes the meaning in a way that changes the point, and editors might disagree strongly about it. You can ask yourself: "would a typical editor at this page feel like the edit could be controversial or needs to be discussed?" If you think "yes" or "maybe", then it is not a minor edit, but if your good-faith opinion is "no, not a problem", then go ahead and mark it minor. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:17, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

I don't believe that the type of edit which you describe is covered by the definition in Help:Minor edit, and in the case of your particular edit I feel that the previous wording is by far the more usual English wording. --David Biddulph (talk) 16:30, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

This edit request to Help:Minor edit has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

This page under the heading of Fashion reads:

Traditionally, men's dress watches appropriate for informal (business), semi-formal, and formal attire are gold, thin, simple, and plain, but increasingly rugged, complicated, or sports watches are considered by some to be acceptable for such attire. Some dress watches have a cabochon on the crown and many women's dress watches have faceted gemstones on the face, bezel, or bracelet. Some are made entirely of faceted sapphire (corundum).[50]

This links to "Sapphire Watch Specs PDF" (PDF). richardmille.com. Retrieved 14 April 2012.

My name is Robert Moore and I would like to change the following because of this broken link on this page under link [50]:

This is the paragraph which link is broken. I would like to fix this with my link to my site where I have a blog entry about sapphire watches.

The link number above is [50]

You can Title the Link to my page as follows: New $1.28 Million New Watch made of Sapphire

The author is link: http://blingyz.com/watch-womens-mens-sapphire-watches/

where I have an article on sapphire watch. Thank you

Robert9334rm (talk) 02:32, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Not done: - spam link. -KH-1 (talk) 02:53, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

This edit request to Help:Minor edit has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Proposed replacement

Replace: Section "Things to remember" , Text "Neither will certain changes that do not affect the presentation of the page in HTML,"

with: Text "In addition, certain changes will not work if they do not affect the presentation of the page in HTML,"

because: Target text contains grammatical sentence fragment dependent upon previous sentence construction, and impedes flow of intended meaning.

Xiopsis (talk) 01:07, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Done Topher385 (talk) 01:20, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

When an article says "X is planned for release in May 2016" and it's now past that date and the product has in fact been released, would changing that to "X was released in May 2016" (if that was actually the case) be a minor edit? Kabutoo (talk) 20:23, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

@Kabutoo: That feels like a major edit to me. Ideally the fact of the release needs a new citation. The previous text, "X is going to be released", might have been backed up by a citation to some pre-release announcement, but that doesn't prove that X actually happened as planned. -- John of Reading (talk) 22:23, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

I also agree that that seems like a major edit. Additionally, a citation to support the product's release update would be prudent. –Matthew - (talk) 20:56, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

This edit request to Help:Minor edit has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Adding of basic punctuation formating. Timotee 123 (talk) 17:19, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

You need to say exactly what changes you wish to be made when making a semi-protected edit request. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:24, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

The house pictured and alleged to be the one Thomas More lived in is not POSSiBLY More’s 16th c. House! This needs to be rewritten. Alfredriggs (talk) 17:44, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

@Alfredriggs: The place to discuss that is at Talk:Thomas More, where it would be very appropriate to bring up that issue. Here, however, is for discussing the Minor edit help page. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:24, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Is anyone else interested in revisiting the issue of why we don't consider altering or adding categories a minor edit? I believe that such edits are minor edits, the vast majority of the time—and, as a very common type of minor edit, they really bloat large watchlists. (I realize that Hotcat does not mark them as minor, but this can be changed (again).)

In my opinion we're at a bit of a crisis here in terms of not being able to filter out low-impact edits by editors who make very small changes to very large numbers of articles in rapid succession. Having enlarged my watchlist some time ago, I find it increasingly offputting. My watchlist is largely taken up by a handful of users in one subject area who make continuous low-impact edits without marking them as minor—and categorization edits must be about half of them, at least. Outriggr (talk) 02:30, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

From your comment on my talk page today you must think of my edits on categories as low-impact, but you didn't mention categories in your talk-page note. I do consider category edits as non-minor edits. Some people differ on what would fit a category. I've done well in not having category reverts or discussions, but I still don't see them as minor edits because of, seriously, their high impact. Adding a page to a category improves Wikipedia's easily-accessible collection on a particular topic. Categories act as a good reference tool for readers and researchers who use them, and to offer everything available on Wikipedia on their topic-of-interest in an as-complete-as-possible-listing seems a valuable tool for society. Alerting other editors of those changes seems important enough to leave them out of the "minor" realm, because incorrect categorization edits do occur (which then have a high-impact on the accurate public representation of a particular Wikipedia collection). Randy Kryn (talk) 02:57, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

I would strongly oppose making category edits minor by default. I realize that some kinds of categorization are simply gnomish edits and could be appropriately marked as minor. But (especially given the flexibility in filtering watchlists) we should not make major/minor distinctions based on how they affect the length of watchlists. The guiding principle is whether or not other editors might disagree with the edit, and there are many kinds of categorization that are highly contentious. Just spend a little time at WP:CfD, and you'll see arguments about how to name or apply a given category, and some such arguments get quite heated. And if one considers WP:BLP, there are lots of ways that applying a category to a BLP page can be a serious policy violation. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:46, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

By the way, there is a simple check box on watchlist pages that allows the list to show or not show category changes. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:52, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Well, I stand by my assertion that the "average" category edit is minor; certainly they shouldn't always be marked that way.

I believe you're referring to a separate entry in the watchlist filter that shows an article being added to a watched category?--as I see no way to hide borderline-spam such as this from my watchlist (and it's taking up most of my watchlist). Outriggr (talk) 20:54, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

It's in your "Preferences" under 'Watchlist' (in the 'Advanced options' section). Randy Kryn (talk) 21:00, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Yes, if you go to that part of the Preferences, you can check "Hide categorization of pages". In addition, on the watchlist screen itself (with all of the new features turned off), there is a line near the top that begins "Hide:", and one of the boxes to check is "page categorization". --Tryptofish (talk) 21:15, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Sounds like a problem thought of and well solved at some point by Wikipedian coders. My hats off to the coders and other well-interested technonauts. Randy Kryn (talk) 03:57, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

A vivid example of a category addition being anything but a minor edit just crossed my watchlist, at Talk:Piss Christ#Hate crimes against Christian category. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:11, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

These guidelines for "Minor edit" seem to reflect technology-oriented aspects only. Writing and editing does not focus on formatting (technical aspect, which online has technology basis) but on content. I recommend changes, such as: major content edit, minor content edit, copy edit, layout (change in headers), formatting (e.g., bolding)... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aboudaqn (talk • contribs) 02:13, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

A recent edit by Flyer22 Reborn pointed out, quite correctly in my opinion, that there is a problem in the way the opening sentences of this help page are written. Currently, they are:

"A check to the minor edit box signifies that only superficial differences exist between the current and previous versions. Examples include typographical corrections, formatting and presentational changes, and rearrangements of text without modification of its content."

The problem is that there are many types of formatting changes and text rearrangements that are not at all minor. Could we word this better? --Tryptofish (talk) 21:25, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Just off the top of my head, how about:

"Examples include typographical corrections, corrections of minor formatting errors, and reversion of obvious vandalism."

--Tryptofish (talk) 21:28, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Yes, that's better. Thanks. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 22:55, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Implemented. – Jonesey95 (talk) 08:21, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Great, thanks! --Tryptofish (talk) 22:03, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

See title DemonDays64 (talk) 21:11, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

कैथून एक कस्बा है। इस क्षेत्र में नगर पालिका लगती है । कैथून में प्रचीन विभीषण मंदिर भी जो लगभग 2000 वर्ष पुराना है । इसे देखने के लिए काफी सँख्या में लोग दूर दूर से आते है। साथ ही यहाँ कोटा डोरिया की साड़िया बनाई जाती है । इस आर्टिकल की आप कैथून पेज पर पोस्ट करो । धन्यवाद कमल सुमन Kamalsuman1994 (talk) 18:05, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

This is the English Wikipedia, so discussions should be in English. If you are looking for a Wikipedia in another language, there is a list at meta:List of Wikipedias. --David Biddulph (talk) 18:09, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

E.g. replacing Firearm with Firearm.

Asmageddon (talk) 20:07, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Yes, that would be a minor edit (so long as you are not changing the word within the brackets). --Tryptofish (talk) 22:04, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Self-explanatory. I have the setting to mark disambiguation page links in orange instead of blue. I was just doing some editing assuming that wiki linking this would be direct to the page like normal. The visual editor didn't show as, so when I did show preview in the source editor, orange. So I went to the article to properly mark the page as disambiguation. Now it didn't change how the page looked. Then to mark as minor edit? Well, it's always safe to assume a major. No strict rule on marking minor edits, so would I mark this as minor? Can I Log In (talk) 02:57, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

@Can I Log In: I use the gadget "Display links to disambiguation pages in orange" but cannot follow your explanation of what you thought was wrong, maybe because I don't use VisualEditor. Daniel Sullivan already had {{hndis}} which automatically adds __DISAMBIG__ so I reverted your edit. The link is still orange for me. I don't think addition of magic words like __DISAMBIG__ should be marked as minor. In my experience, including your example, such additions are often wrong and should be reverted. Another example is improper addition to set index articles which are not disambiguation pages although some users think it. Minor edit is for edits "that no editor would be expected to regard as disputable". PrimeHunter (talk) 04:26, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Using the orange link disambiguation gadget, all of those links should be orange. I was editing in the visual editor, and one of the disambiguation link was not orange.

On topic of minor edits, so regarding these types of edits, we just don't mark as minor? Can I Log In (talk) 04:44, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

@Can I Log In: As a DABfixer, I find the orange markup invaluable. I have seen an extremely rare glitch, where redirects to DAB pages show blue; but it's of negligible importance.

I never mark recategorisations as minor. That includes things like adding e.g. "geo" or "surname" parameters to a {{dab}} tag. The only edits on DAB pages which I mark as minor are things like blatant typos; and sorting, adding {{TOC right}}, adding or editing headings, and removing pipes per WP:DABPIPE, which change the way information is presented but do not change its content. If I change something, e.g. a date, to agree with the article, I do not mark that as minor.

Every manual addition of the magic word __DISAMBIG__ which I have seen has been wrong. Narky Blert (talk) 08:27, 21 February 2020 (UTC)