Too Many Minor Edits Considered Harmful

To avoid arguing about the specifics of individuals and individual edits, here are a few things to remember. These don't make a definitive case, they don't prove anything conclusively. They are points to remember when you think about touching a page ...

If most of your edits are minor, people may miss your more important contributions.
If there are large numbers of minor edits, RecentChanges gets clogged.
- Note: Using the "?min=" option on RecentChanges risks missing malicious edits in which semantics are changed by small edits.
The occasional missing comma, "s" instead of "z", or use of "--" instead of "-", are truly minor issues. Removing these differences can be thought of as reducing the variety on wiki.
Some people find it off-putting to have their contributions altered in trivial ways.

In lengthy prose:

Please expand your "ignored spelling" criteria to include the "s" vs "z" words like visualise, categorise, vapourise (just kidding -- correct spelling is "vaporise"), etc. If a '.' is missing after a bullet point or URL, ignore it. If a comma is missing, but a sentence is still fully readable and not rendered ambiguous by the missing comma, ignore it. If you see a '--' being used for an em dash, ignore it.

Actually, use of "z", rather than "s" in the words you mention makes for consistency and avoids incorrect links when the words occur in a page name. However, that wouldn't extend to changing spellings in text quoted from some other site.

On the other hand, please do fix non-debatable misspellings like "acheive", "neccesary", "their" vs "they're" vs "there", "its" vs "it's", letter trasnpoistiosn and so on that truly are jarring. Please do fix punctuation faults that make sentences difficult to read. Please do ReFactor to simplify and clarify.

Providing a comma (after an introductory clause or phrase) does often make the sentence less difficult to read. Such use (of the comma) is advocated in many punctuation guides, such as http://www.sfep.org.uk/pages/magazine_style_guide_print.htm.

Punctuation guides in common use, such as http://www.syr.edu/publications/style/style2001.pdf (from the Newhouse School of Journalism at Syracuse University), or the "New York Times Manual of Style and Usage", advocate guidelines that are more complex than "provide a comma (after an introductory clause or phrase)." For example, the Syracuse guide suggests a comma when the phrase exceeds five words in length, except when the comma changes the meaning of the sentence. It seems to me that we should, in general, leave "commafication" alone, especially after a specific change is subsequently reverted.

CategoryWiki