Project:Page Summary

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We strongly recommend to give a short summary of your changes in the summary line below each edit form when submitting content to this Wiki. There are different reasons for this:

  1. Most importantly: If you are creating a new page with sensitive information that you intend to protect with Group Based Access Control you should be aware that the whole submitted data can be accessed by not authorized third parties for a certain period of time if you do not enter a summary.[1] [2]
  2. The same applies to new content that you add to existing pages that are protected with Group Based Access Control. Please note that when you are making changes on an already existing page, the summary line already will be filled with a summary suggestion, normally with the headline of the section that you were adding your content to. If you want this headline not to be seen in the summary either, just replace it.
  3. For people who are scanning the Recent Changes page regularly (for example by using rss or atom feed) it is very helpful to have a short meaningful summary shown behind the entry. So - by submitting a short summary you show netiquette towards your community fellows. (It's nice to be nice!)

If you are concerned about time waste: At least consider to type in an abbreviation. Any abbreviation will do, even if it is only one character. Wikipedia has a good summary policy with convenient abbreviations.

References

  1. This is because the system accepts your submitted page content as summary information. The first few sentences of this summary information (that is: your page content) will appear in brackets behind your entry on the Recent Changes page and therefore be visible for everybody. Moreover the whole (!) submitted text of your new page will be visible via rss or atom feed of the Recent Changes page. Please avoid this by entering a summary!
  2. The basic security problems with the authorization extension Group Based Access Control are remaining, see CoLab Usergroups and Security issues with authorization extensions.