Help talk:Minor edit

Is there an established guideline to link to instead? Should this become one?

I was about to link Help:Minor edit to explain a potential problem with an edit, which might have been incorrectly marked as a "minor edit", possibly to avoid scrutiny. Is there no established policy or guideline about this? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:48, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

It's reasonable to link here for that purpose, and it's true that misuse can be a way of trying to avoid scrutiny. However, the reason that this isn't a guideline, and I don't know of any guideline such as WP:DE that mentions it, is that the boundary between minor and not-minor is too subjective to be enforceable. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:28, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

That's a shame in my opinion, as the minor edit mark is quite extensively used and trusted. I think the guidelines for this feature could and should be made objective enough to be considered a policy. This feature has been around for so long that enough experience and information has been gathered on its use to be able to establish a clear line. If not I think this feature should be removed as it's just stupid to have it without regulations, since many misuse or even abuse it then. It seems to me to be fairly common. Particularly are there many who seems to believe that updating sports articles and statistics is considered minor, while I think it's clear from these informal guidelines – uhm, information – that that's not what the Minor edit function is intended to be. But it's not mentioned here, so I cannot say for sure and strike down on those who do it. Details like that can be worked out to form a clear and concise guideline. --Mango från yttre rymden (talk) 19:34, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Sentence in lead

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)

What are minor edits for?

I've been mulling something over for a while. I'm not sure where I should formally bring it up, but I thought I'd ask here to get a few views on what I think.

When was the last time an edit being minor helped you - for example, because you didn't review it because it was marked minor by an editor you trust not to misuse the facility? I cannot even bring the last time to mind.

When was the last time you saw misuse of the facility? For me, it's today - and today is not a special day. Some people use it randomly, some people use it all the time.

In view of this, I'm wondering why it exists. Pinkbeast (talk) 19:33, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

I disregard whether an edit is marked as minor when reviewing my watchlist as the feature is so frequently misused. I can't remember a time it's ever helped me. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 01:06, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

The minor edit feature is fairly useless in my opinion. Many people unknowingly mark major edits as minor, based on their own opinion of what constitutes "minor" rather than the agreed criteria. It is also easy to forget to tick the minor edit box, so many minor edits will not be marked as such. There are also other non-minor edits I would like to ignore, for example the edit history of sports pages tend to be flooded with "plus one" edits where someone plays one more game or scores one more goal and their stats are updated accordingly. I would scrap the minor edit system and try to improve the revision history metadata. For example, if you add 5,000 characters to an article and remove 5,001, the revision history shows "-1", which is clearly not indicative of the magnitude of the change. --Jameboy (talk) 12:53, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Any way to mark an edit as minor on the mobile site?

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

कैथून

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)

Is adding a link to a page a minor edit?

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)

Marking as disambiguation page: Minor or major edit?

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.[1] 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)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 March 2020

Probiotics can be a potential therapeutic agent used to reduce coronavirus infection by production of IgA and IgG which improves immunity Suyash.kathade9 (talk) 20:55, 14 March 2020 (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. JTP ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:16, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

References

A quick question I don't see stated on this page

When I add a short description to an article, should it be classified as minor? Prana1111 (talk) 19:05, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

It's a substantive change that other contributors may wish to review and could even disagree with. So please don't mark such an edit as minor. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 23:57, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it may be controversial. So it can't possibly be minor. Don't mark it that way. -◊PRAHLAD^Balaji 09:57, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

The m

Did they mention the m in any edits above the ..(major edit) -Cupper52 (talk) 14:22, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Changing image

Was it to possible to change image with minor? e.g C# fanart logo replaced by Official C# logo by Microsoft. Flankbed (talk) 08:40, 3 November 2020 (UTC)