Help:Minor edit
When editing a page, there is an option to mark the edit as a minor edit. This tells other readers and editors that you have made only superficial changes to the page and that it is not controversial. Examples of minor edits include fixing typos, correcting template usage, fixing formatting, and reverting vandalism. A minor edit is marked with a bolded m in the page history and on the diff of the edit.
By contrast, a 'major edit' is one that changes the context of the page significantly, or could be controversial and of interest to other editors. For example, adding or removing an entire paragraph is not a minor edit, but so is adding or removing the word 'not', since adding or removing that word can change the meaning of an entire sentence or page.
Whether or not an edit is marked as minor can be significant. Editors may choose to ignore edits that have been marked as minor in recent changes or their watchlist. If an edit could potentially be considered by someone else to be controversial, it should probably not be marked as minor. A good rule of thumb is that edits consisting only of spelling corrections, formatting changes, or rearrangement of text without modifying them should be marked as minor.
Only users who are logged in can mark their edits as minor. You cannot mark an edit as minor if you are creating a new page.
How to mark an edit as minor[edit source]
Below the edit summary field there is a checkbox that says 'This is a minor edit'. Click on the checkbox before clicking 'Publish page' to mark the edit as a minor edit.
You can also use keyboard shortcuts to quickly check the checkbox. The access key for the minor edit checkbox is i. On Chrome and Firefox, the keyboard shortcut is usually ⎇ Alt-⇧ Shift-i.
When filling in the edit summary box, pressing Tab ↹+Space will also check the minor edit checkbox.
When to mark an edit as minor[edit source]
- Simple spelling, grammatical, and punctuational changes.
- Simple formatting changes, like capitalization or adding italics to book titles.
- Formatting that doesn't change the meaning of the page, like moving an image to a different part of the page where it makes more sense.
- Fixing obvious factual errors (e.g. changing "The sky is green" to "The sky is blue").
- Correcting links on the page.
- Reverting or removing obvious vandalism.
When not to mark an edit as minor[edit source]
- Adding or removing content.
- Adding or removing references.
- Adding comments to a talk page.
Things to remember[edit source]
It's generally bad taste to mark a major edit as minor. If you are ever in doubt about whether or not you should mark an edit as minor, it's probably best not to mark it as minor.
If you do accidentally mark an edit as minor, it's never a bad idea to make a second edit after that, such as a dummy edit, and explain in your edit summary what happened. Make sure that your second edit changes some content; simply opening the edit window and then saving will not work.
If you ever do get into a disagreement with another editor as to whether or not an edit should've been marked as minor, it is better to talk about it on the talk page. If an edit war appears to be brewing, it's best not to mark any reverts as minor.
Marking an edit as minor doesn't mean that your changes were somehow less important than major edits. A minor edit just means that your changes were not controversial and that everyone could reasonably agree that they can be unquestioningly kept.
Other scenarios[edit source]
Administrators, content moderators and rollbackers have an extra button called rollback that, when clicked, allows them to quickly revert all consecutive edits made by a user to the last edit not made by that user. This is usually done to revert vandalism. Rollbacks are always marked as a minor edit.
Bots usually mark their edits as minor, since most bots engage in maintenance and not actual content creation.
See also[edit source]
- Help:Minor edit on the English Wikipedia
- Help:Minor edit on Meta Wikimedia