====== Change Summary ======
Can the editor of a page add a short summary of the changes they have made?

This information is usually displayed alongside edits on the Recent Changes display the [[Page History]], and is a useful part of wiki collaboration, along with the [[Minor Changes]] flagging feature. It allows people to communicate a little information about what changes are taking place, which makes the recent changes and [[Page History]] displays far more useful they would be otherwise.

Obviously it depends on users making use of the summary box. Newbies will tend not to bother entering a summary at all (since they haven't really grasped the usefulness of it) but typically you will get a good proportion of people using it, which is enough to make the history displays useful.

Clearly users should focus on the change itself, and not spend too much time pondering about what to put for their change summary. Some might argue that change summaries are therefore an unnecessary distraction, however without this feature you cannot gain much from looking at a [[Page History]] display. You are confronted with a stark list. You can only use the [[Revision Diffs]] links (if available) to find out what each edit was.

Some wikis provide a very large box for entering a change summary. This is a mistake, because it invites the user to spend too long thinking about their summary. Also large summaries cause too much mess and word-wrapping in the history displays. Change summaries should be short and snappy.