Help:Dummy edit
This is an information page. It is not one of Wikipedia'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 of consensus and vetting. |
A dummy edit is a slight change in a page's
null 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's edit 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 through 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 a dynamic 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 hold 500 characters.
- Correcting a previous edit summary, such as an accidental marking of a previous edit as minor.
- Addressing an accidental or improper-and-rethought use of rollback for a good-faith edit, or at least, for an edit that was not clearly vandalism.
- While logged in to your Wikipedia user account, noting that a previous edit posted by an IP address was you, but editing while you were accidentally logged out.
- 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 absent WP:RIA). Such essential repair using dummy edits presents in a number of contexts, non-exclusively described below, with suggested dummy edit, edit summaries for each context listed: