I think this is a big mistake. Edit summaries are IMHO still part of communication and can be very useful. Doug Weller (talk) 12:09, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
Topic on Talk:Talk pages project/Flow
It does allow them. Edit summaries are less useful on talk pages, though, so the summary field is hidden in the Advanced drawer in order not to distract inexperienced users. (You can change the summary even in the new discussion tool, which is not possible in the classic editor.)
Thanks.I believe it should be the default, at least on enwiki we encourage people to use edit summaries, and in requests for Administration Admins have had their lack of edit summaries mentioned. And I can see no reason at all why Talk pages project/Replying#What it is doesn't mention this. Sure, it's in [[Talk pages project/Feature summary]] but I'd prefer not to have to click to another page to find out what it does, although I'm happy for the screen shots to be on another page. I see I have to sign for myself on this page. Doug Weller (talk) 14:39, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
I disagree with this - I don't see the point of putting in an edit summary on a talk page edit; if it conveys any actual information, that means that people trying to follow the conversation on a talk page now need to read the page history as well - more work for everyone. If potential admins on Wikipedia get points deducted for not writing talk page edit summaries, that seems like a problem on Wikipedia.
For people using watchlists to keep track of articles and talk pages, edit summaries are extremely useful. And of course we want to encourage their use elsewhere, and this doesn't help. So far as I can see, you haven't edited much and your edits are on projects associated with the encyclopedia, so you don't seem to have much experience, oe none, on something like en.wiki. So you'll have little or no experience of watchlists. I don't mean to be rude, but I'd prefer to here from people with a lot of experience editing on their own language wikipedia. They are more likely to know what will be useful. Doug Weller (talk) 17:03, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
On watchlists edit summaries can tell you whether you need to read the whole comment or not (e,g, is it a strand of discussion you are following? is someone replying to you?, just correcting a typo, etc), in page histories they can help you find the particular comment you are looking for. This is especially true when talk pages are being used for complex discussions, where article content is being drafted or other things other than just simple discussion. So they should always be available to enter and never hidden. For example for this comment I would (if I could) summarise it as "agree with Doug", which is much easier for someone to parse in histories and watchlists than the first however many characters of my comment, which will probably leave someone reading it little wiser about my comment. Thryduulf (talk) 17:29, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
Aargh- I’ve just looked at the so-called edit summaries of edits to this very page. Incomprehensible!
It's worse. If I start a new topic on an editor's talk page to give them a Discretionary sanctions alert, it just publishes it without the warning that I should be checking various places to make sure they don't already have one. Doug Weller (talk) 13:55, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
As I remarked on enwiki (don't want to split the conversation), edit summaries on discussion pages are not generally used (edit: usefully) on enwiki, so I don't see the need for a change in this area. (The discretionary sanctions thing is unrelated and at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T298263 for any onlookers; I see Doug Weller has already commented.)
"edit summaries on discussion pages are not generally used on enwiki," eh!? Edit summaries are almost always used on every page on enwiki and have been for well over a decade. Thryduulf (talk) 10:16, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
I spoke imprecisely: edit summaries on discussion pages are not usually used to convey anything interesting on enwiki besides the single words "reply" or "comment", and most of the remainder is people saying their bolded !vote in a discussion ("sup", "opp").
It's good to encourage their use. I certainly use them when I want to make sure that a point I am making is seen in the history of the discussion page. Doug Weller (talk) 11:08, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
even "reply" and "comment" can be useful, summaries like "reply to ..." and "comment re ..." even more so when you are browsing the page history or see it in your watchlist.
I quite like 'reply' as the default edit summary on any talk page. It makes my life easy. But there are innumerable times when I need to do much, much more, including pinging another editor, or explaining why I'm making the reply I'm making in just a couple of key words.
As I proposed on IRC, when the reply includes a ping, automatically making the edit summary "reply to ..." (or "reply (pinged ...)", to be 100% accurate), sounds like it would be a positive move. Nick, for your use cases, I would certainly expect them to provide an option to always show the edit summary box, as I did with reply-link.
Once you open the "Advanced" drawer, it stays open until you close it. It's a sticky pref that will follow you from page to page (but not, I think, from wiki to wiki) forever.
I didn't know that; I'll give it a try. Thank you, WAID.
One of the most important uses of reply on a discussion page is when that's a user talk page and you are commenting on policy/guidelines violations and vandalism - it gives a clear trail in the talk page history. I think it should be the default, not "Advanced'. Doug Weller (talk) 11:20, 26 December 2021 (UTC)
When you reply, it indents to the right. Does this continue ad nauseam?
A way to control the indent has definitely been identified as a missing feature of the reply link.
Glad to hear that. Doug Weller (talk) 19:09, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
We’ll that caught me by surprise, I assumed I was logged in as I’m logged in elsewhere. But why the hell does my IP still show up when I edit it? Doug Weller (talk) 19:11, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
I think edit summaries are also very important, at least on enwiki, at noticeboards.
I never put manual edit summaries for talk pages unless archiving or doing something outside a section (like putting a map-requested template), and I never read them when participating in a conversation. Looking through talk page histories, it seems that's how most editors operate. The auto-generated edit summaries just track which section is being commented on, and that's useful when archiving or tracking down unsigned comments. But beyond knowing the topic of conversation, I don't see the point. If it's important to know what the editor did in that edit, it's easy to read the diff. Otherwise, the implied action is "I commented on the topic of this section".
That said, I'm not sure it's worth hiding the edit summary box, when it's not that tall, and can be easily ignored. At the vary least, instead of "Advanced", maybe the text hiding it should say "Show edit summary/watchlist options" so editors new and old would be able to find those things more easily.
I use them quite a bit on user talk pages, especially with problematic editors. I think that helps other editors who have the user on their watch list. I agree there is no advantage to hiding the edit summary box - I see only disadvantage.