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I wonder if you could include in the Edit Post page some “Edit Summary” standard options (like Tags) For example:

  • “Grammatical errors fixed”
  • “Spelling errors fixed”
  • “Code block added”

And so…

With those standard options we can make some statistics about common error in the moment to create new post, add answers etc.

For example:

30% of new posts have Spelling Mistakes.

20% of new answers have Grammatical Errors.

Today we can write in “Edit summary” whatever we want: “Grammatical errors fixed and Code block added”, other user can put: “Code block added and grammatical errors fixed”. This information is very difficult to analyze.

We this, I think we could:

  1. Analyze information about common errors
  2. Write summary faster
  3. Standard inputs usually improve quality.
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    For reference, in my autocomplete are "clarified question", "removed salutation", "fixed title" and "grammatical errors" (and "gud english" for some reason)
    – Zelda
    Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 12:06
  • @BenBrocka those are interesting options too. ("Gud english" in first place), the problem here is that your autocomplete options, are different to mine.
    – Pablo Claus
    Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 12:11
  • i think as per my knowledge spelling mistake is not a mistake because in English we used to say "okay" and "ok" so which one is right? here it is the concern is to understand the question and answer. yeah i agreed on the Grammatical Errors which could not be there in the question.
    – Vikrant More
    Commented Jul 28, 2012 at 20:17
  • I had the same idea, since most of my edit summaries follow that pattern of a combination of standard phrases. You could write a GreaseMonkey script implementing this, though that only provides the second benefit, “Write summary faster”.
    – Rory O'Kane
    Commented Jul 23, 2013 at 15:26
  • Related: Clickable edit summary options
    – Balder
    Commented Mar 24, 2014 at 7:37

2 Answers 2

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I don't see any significant value in edit comments like your examples, if I want to know what the edit changed, I look at the diff. The important stuff that belongs in the revision comment is the why, the sometimes non-obvious reason why you changed something. In most cases there is no important "why", you just fixed some problems with the post and there is no reason to put anything in the revision comment.

In many cases you also fix multiple issues at the same time, those default edit comments won't help you then. This issue would also significantly complicate any effort to create statistics out of those comments.

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    A solution that has checkboxes for "fixed formatting" "grammatical errors" ect would allow mixing/matching to address your last paragraph and would make statistics easy.
    – Zelda
    Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 12:27
  • I don't see a large benefit from collecting these statistics, sure they would be interesting, but I don't see how they would help to improve the sites.
    – Mad Scientist
    Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 12:29
  • Well for one thing it might be good evidence for those who seem to think spelling/gramatical errors should never be corrected via edits unless there's something massively wrong with the post that needs major editing...
    – Zelda
    Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 12:35
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    For example if you see that 50% of new posts have spelling mistakes, you could include some "spelling/grammar checker" to help to improve quality.
    – Pablo Claus
    Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 12:38
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I agree It'd be a useful feature to have some prefab common edit reasons.

But in the meantime the desired feature can be simulated with certain web browsers' (or plug-ins') autofill features. For example:

  • on Monday I edit a post in Chromium, and write in the Edit Summary box “Spelling errors fixed”.

  • On Tuesday in Chromium I edit another typo-riddled post, and now the Edit Summary box has a autofill pulldown that says “Spelling errors fixed”.

...and so forth, so that autofill pulldowns below, (or above, it depends on window position), the Edit Summary on my system show the most common reason given from my prior edits. Here's a picture using this answer:

Image of pullup showing selection edit strings

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