User blog:Datalocust/Creating Proper Convention for 'Edit Summary' Field

Accepted Convention?!?!
Hello all,

I have been noticing that there are a TON of people who do not properly fill out the 'Edit Summary' field when making edits. Even more are not posting anything at ALL! I have been looking through the proper 'Wikiquette' (Wiki Etiquette) but honestly have not looked through all of the acceptable terms of use and convention for this Wikia. I really want to help make this one of the most compete sources for information pertaining to the "Elder Scrolls", and especially since there are so many dedicated and interested people who contribute to this wikia. I have been using the explain everything you edited in detail, or copy what you actually changed and post it in the edit summary field method. I wanted to know how everyone felt about this, and if the norm, or a shortened / abbreviated version of the edit should be used in the edit summary completion.

What I've Been Working On
I have been playing around with a few different methods and recently since I have been editing as many new images as I can catch with their proper licensing and category placement. I have templates and text files with this infomation already compiled which I then copy/paste into the 'source' version of the page edit. This however does not allow for the automatic completion of the edit summary. I have not figured out, nor found what the proper wiki markup would be for completing the edit summary directly from the 'source' section of the page. I could always just copy the edit into the summary, but I would like to be able to do this directly using code.

Current WorkAround
There is one way I have been able to work around this slightly, by using the auto-completion that uses the directing URL processing instructions directly passed to the server. This is how the section edit title is automatically filled out when clicking edit next to an article section title. Any edit can be set up this way by appending '&summary=FillOutTheSummary' to any edit URL. For instance: "http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Skyrim_Trainers&action=edit&summary=Changes_Made_To_Page" would automatically add the edit summary of "Changes Made To Page" to the edit summary without having to again type it out.

Again I'm just trying to find out what everyone thought about how the convention should be accepted in filling out the edit summary, and also how it might be done directly from coding on the 'source' editor page.

Thanks to anyone who wants to contribute!!

~Datalocust Talk|Contribs|User 18:30, December 11, 2011 (UTC)