Enter just a comment into the Summary box during an edit (where you are just adding a comment, not changing any article text...)
Everyting operates sucessfully but nothing is actually written to the database.
The user's changes are thrown away without any message to the user.
Enter just a comment into the Summary box during an edit (where you are just adding a comment, not changing any article text...)
That basically means that you write an edit summary for a non-existing edit.
Everyting operates sucessfully but nothing is actually written to the database.
Because no edit happens.
The user's changes are thrown away without any message to the user.
What would you expect instead, and why?
The user made no changes.
That's the reason why nothing is written to the database.
Pressing the SUBMIT button should trigger an error on the user's screen:
"REQUIRED FIELD MISSING: you did not make any changes, but are pushing the SUBMIT button.
Now either go back and make some changes, or don't push the submit button."
Otherwise it seems this is the way for the user to update his edit comment.
As often happens when using a Chinese input system, the user makes an
edit, filling in the comment with "Actually", when a misplaced RET
causes the form to be submitted.
Well he now wants to go back and change that comment to "Actually X Y Z
should be 1 2 3".
Well it appears to him that MediaWiki accepted his comment update, or
comment addition, or "null edit" (not exactly
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Purge#Null_edits ),
when in fact you have thrown it away.
I find it unbelievable that the smart way to do things is not even print
any kind of error message when he submits a form that you cannot or do
not wish to act upon.
Imagine any kind of reservation system where the higher levels of the
system accept the form submission, only to have the lower levels reject
it, unbeknownst to the user.
It should be the higher levels being more conservative than the lower
levels. You clearly have a problem on your hands.
Even
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Edit_summary#Changing_an_edit_summary
does not warn that simply editing again with no changes except a summary will be entirely thrown away with no feedback to the user.
Let's say he didn't even enter any comment at all. He submits the form and it is accepted he goes out of the office only to come back the next day to find the boss angry at him because he didn't make the changes he was supposed to do.
So what happened? Well he edited the article, but somehow undid them before he pushed Submit form.
In this case the form should remind him, "what are you doing you're trying to submit a form with no changes."
Imagine a password change form where the user just doesn't even enter anything but just hits submit.
Well, wouldn't somebody expect a little error message somewhere？
If I get it right, you are asking for a confirmation dialog like "You did not make any change to the content. Do you want to continue?"
My understanding is that confirmation dialogs should be only displayed for destructive actions.
"Losing" an edit summary does not seem to be a destructive action (no wiki content deleted) and modern browsers can cache what you have entered in forms.
I'm going to reopen this task and turn this a feature request, but personally I'd still decline.
We don't need more warning dialogs but less, and we should not ask a user for every single action "Are you really really sure you want to do what you do?"
Yes. In fact similar websites would probably not even open up the comment box unless the user has made some change in the editing box.
And if he removed his changes, there should be a warning, as the comment box should close back up, but there is text in there, so it should say "No edit changes made, throw away your proposed comments too?"
Anyway, whatever you do, warn upon detecting any invalid input that shows the user is not using the form as intended.