What to do about good suggested edits with very bad summaries?

Question

In review, I've seen a number of edits that were good ...except for the edit summaries.

Bad summaries are most often something like, "Improved question." This is a bad summary because any editor assumes his/her edits have improved the question, or they would never have suggested the edits in the first place. This provides no information whatsoever about what is changed, and is worse than putting in no summary at all, because with no summary, Ask Ubuntu generates a basic, purely syntactic summary of the edit, which is often somewhat useful.

So far I've just largely ignored the problem. When I think the changes made by an edit are good, I approve the edit.

But the number of users applying these bad summaries seems to be increasing (though I do not intend that as a scientific claim). I feel like I shouldn't simply ignore this.

But what should I do? Here are some possibilities...

• I could reject the edit. But I don't want to do that, because the actual changes are good.

• I don't think I can "Improve" the edit (with the "Improve" button)--edits that change only a summary are not accepted by Ask Ubuntu.

• Should I try to contact the user personally?

• Should I post a comment? I don't want to pollute questions and answers with these kinds of comments (not even directed at the original poster).

• I could post a feature request, asking that the edit summary text box carry a more explicit statement of what it's for, or for phrases like "improved question" to be automatically detected and rejected as edit summaries.

• Or I could just go back to ignoring this, as I've been doing until now.

Answer 1

When the edit in itself is good, summaries shouldn't matter.

What about those super bot type editors whose edits always carry summaries like added xxx chars in body??

That said, while good summaries are to be encouraged, we don't have a specific need of discouraging 'bad' ones, I believe...

Answer 2

In the beginning (at Ask Ubuntu), I made many edits with this kind of summary. I thought That was OK, since there are reviewers, who actually see my edits, and I also think that was good suggestions. ( 1/66 is rejected, for the rejected one, I also feared that might be rejected ).

But now, I see that, this kind of summary may confuse reviewer or create annoyance. So, I am now changing that habit.

My answer will be (After knowing that the edits are not hidden) : Option 5, that is post a feature request, asking users to remind about good summaries by adding something with this one:

We welcome all constructive edits, but please make them substantial. Avoid trivial, tiny one-letter edits unless absolutely necessary.

Because, that helped me to avoid unnecessary edits, might also help me (and many others) to avoid typical, two worded summaries.

Also, if a certain pattern is found on the summary string, we can warn user with a warning like this :

Finally, We need to remove these strings as suggested summaries: (Because that does something for my short edit summary habit )

Answer 3

I've seen a few exceptionally bad edit summaries. For example "Edited tags" when actually the tags have been edited plus the title or body. I reject edits like that because the edit summary is misleading, usually writing something like "Please make sure your edit summary accurately describes the edit", or at most terse, "Inaccurate description".

That said, I realize this can happen by accident, so I'm sympathetic. E.g. if you edit the tags and don't leave a summary, the system will write "Edited tags" for you. Then if you go back and edit the title or body, and don't change the summary, it will stay as "Edited tags".

In the case of a summary like "Improved question", if the edit is minor, I'll let it pass. If it's major, I'd be more hesitant.

But take this with a grain of salt, because I'm probably the most anal edit reviewer. I have about the same numbers of approved, rejected, and improved edits.