Restore Minor Edits

The MinorEdits function would be worth restoring. The bytecount feature of NewRecentChanges is useful but doesn't always do exactly what some people want (witness discussion in January-March 2006 on TooMinorEditsConsideredHarmful, EmDashInAscii). NewRecentChanges could continue to show all edits, as at present, but could gain a URL parameter for not showing minor edits, and the original RecentChanges could function as it used to, along with RecentEdits.

What do other people think?

I never use NewRecentChanges. It doesn't tell me what I'm interested to know. Until yesterday, I hadn't looked at NewRecentChanges in several months. Looking at NewRecentChanges didn't even occur to me until yesterday. I only use conventional RecentChanges. I would appreciate the restoration of MinorEdits if we get a RecentEdits page. MinorEdits would be useless to me if it were only a feature of new-style recent changes. -- ElizabethWiethoff

I agree with Eliz about NewRecentChanges, but I think there's a remaining issue about MinorEdits: the problem with Anon was that although he arguably provides a service by obsessing about editing punctuation (I don't agree with all of his tastes, thus "arguably"), he was obscuring conversations by leaping in and doing his obsessive edits right between two people who were trying to discuss something, which made the diff against the previous version useless, and thus obstructed conversation.

If we brought back MinorEdits, so that Anon could go wild without cluttering RecentChanges, we would still have that problem, which would then be solved only if the normal diff were applied only between major edits, not between minor edits - something that I sort of doubt Ward sees as interesting to support, although it would help solve this particular kind of problem.

As a reminder, MinorEdits went away because it was being abused to hide major edits during EditWars; that particular Achilles Heel remains even with my suggestion. -- DougMerritt

On the other hand, there are now committed stewards with powers to deal with abuse; they should be keeping an eye on MinorEdits. The possibility of abuse is why I suggested leaving NewRecentChanges' functionality unmodified.

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