 | This is aninformation page. It is not anencyclopedic article, nor one ofWikipedia's policies or guidelines; rather, its purpose is to explain certain aspects of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices. It may reflect differing levels ofconsensus andvetting. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Mobile edits with misleading edit summaries probably werenot intended to deceive patrollers. |
Thecanned edit summary is a feature that allows users to quickly insert common or repeatededit summaries for their contributions. This feature is available as part of the standard browser-based editor in someversions of Wikipedia (such as theRussian andChinese editions, but not including the English edition), as well as Wikipedia'smobile application, which can be used on any edition. Before a user saves their edit, they may press one or more of the on-screen buttons, each representing a commonly used edit summary. These options may include "Fixed typo", "Fixed grammar", or "Added links", among others, depending on the wiki in which it is used.
While this is a convenient feature for users, some may click or tap the buttons simply because the buttons are there, or perhaps they think theyhave to select one (i.e., they believe the edit will not be saved unless they enter a summary, which is not true). Consequently, one may see a substantial edit with the summary "Fixed typo" or other misleading summary.Patrollers should be carefulnot to assume the edit summary was intentionallymisleading or that the edit was made inbad faith.
As an added measure to help withidentifying and dealing withvandalism and otherdisruptive edits, anautomated filter adds thetagcanned edit summary to these types of edits made on the English Wikipedia. As the web-based editor does not offer canned edit summaries, these edits should also have the tagsMobile app edit orMobile web edit in addition toMobile edit (seeWikipedia:Tags andSpecial:Tags).
Even though there is no edit summary feature enabled by default on English Wikipedia, there is an optional feature that users can turn on that provides drop-downs with canned edit summaries. This feature can be turned on by going to thegadget tab of the preferences and checking off "Add two new dropdown boxes below the edit summary box with some useful default summaries" under the Editing section.