Adummy edit is a slight change in a page'swikitext that has no effect on the rendered page but allows an editor to save a usefuledit summary. By contrast, anull edit—clicking "Publish changes" without changing anything—does not modify the wikitext, does not create an edit summary, and does not appear in the page'sedit history.
Purposes
Through a dummy edit, an edit summary can be provided, aimed at:
Sending messages regarding editing issues (however, dummy edits should not be used to hold extensive content discussions; that should be done throughtalk pages). Sending a message via the edit summary ("SMS") is one way of communicating with other editors where it appears there is no need to create a new talk page thread for the message. Such "text messages" in a page's history may also be seen by users who otherwise would not be informed. For example, users who do not have accounts may edit from adynamic IP address, and thus communication through the IP's talk page may not be well suited to reach that person. Such messages may also be useful to reach an editor who might not see a talk page thread, if a discussion was opened there. When raising some issue in the edit summary, it may be useful to provide a link in that message to the talk page and state that further discussion is taking or should take place there. Each edit summary can hold500 characters.
Correcting a previous edit summary, such as an accidental marking of a previous edit asminor.
Providing proof of activity from time to time by a user who does not wish to contribute but does not want to be seen as entirely inactive (such an edit is normally made to a user's own user or user talk page).
Repairing insufficient or absentcopyright attribution under Wikipedia's free copyright licenses (CC BY-SA 4.0 and in some cases theGFDL as well) – that is, for content copied and pasted from acompatibly-licensed source, but without an edit summary that both: i) stated the copying taking place; and ii) provided a hyperlink to the source of that copying. The use of dummy edits for such repair is explained atWikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia (shortcut:WP:COPYWITHIN); see specifically its sections onproper attribution (shortcut:WP:PATT) and onrepairing insufficient attribution (shortcut:WP:RIA). Such essential repair using dummy edits presents in a number of contexts, non-exclusively described below, with suggesteddummy edit, edit summaries for each context listed:
Content copied and pasted from one English Wikipedia page to any another (this may just be generic copying, but also may be from a more formal but improperly donemerge orsplit)—
The previous edit as of 07:48, May 11, 2025, copied content from the Wikipedia page at [[Exact name of page copied from]]; see its history for attribution. This may be supplemented by adding{{copied}} to the talk page.
Content in the edit as of 07:48, May 11, 2025 is copied from the existing Wiktionary definition at [[wikt:Exact name of Wiktionary page]]; see its history for attribution.
Content copied or translated from another language Wikipedia. Using the French Wikipedia as the example—
Content in the edit as of 07:48, May 11, 2025 is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at [[:fr:Exact name of French article]]; see its history for attribution. This may be supplemented by adding{{Translated page}} to the talk page.
Content in the edit as of 07:48, May 11, 2025 is copied from http://insert.fandom.com/insert_rest_of_url, licensed under CC BY-SA; see its page history for attribution For this example, attribution should be coupled with adding a filled-out{{Fandom content}} template to the article's references. For equivalent templates for other types of sites, seeCategory:Attribution templates. (Be aware also that though most Wikia sites are compatibly licensed, notall are.)
While other methods will work, the simplest method is to add a space at the end of the first line in the page's wikitext. Or, if the space already exists, remove it.
Other methods
Adding anHTML comment. For example, adding<!-- dummy edit; can be deleted. --> to a page will not affect its presentation.
Adding or removing adouble space or editing a reference by adding one space before </ref> in the string "}}</ref>" so that it appears as "}} </ref>" allows for an edit summary without affecting the appearance of the page.
Changing the number ofnewlines in the edit text. Changing a space to a line break in running text or vice versa; or adding or removing a single blank line after a header.
Adding an extra blank line where there was none isnot a dummy edit in general, as it may add a paragraph break.
Adding newlines to theend of the page willnot serve as a dummy edit; that change won't be saved, so it will result in anull edit.
Changing the number of spaces. Changing one space character to two or more (or vice versa) also has no effect on the rendered page. Multiple space characters always render as a single space, unless the spaces are in a preformatted environment (e.g. line begins with a leading space,<code>,<pre>,<syntaxhighlight>).[1]
Note that an attempted dummy edit may result in a substantive change if done incautiously; e.g., excess blank lines can result in inadvertent paragraph breaks. It may also make the page more difficult to edit if the method of making the dummy edits causes poor text spacing (for example, extra spaces between two words in a sentence).
