Help:Edit summary

Each edit on Wikidata has a short message called edit summary associated with it. When making edits to items, properties or lexemes using Wikidata's regular web interface, the edit summary is automatically generated and cannot be customized unless the edit is a revert.

• cur: difference with the latest revision
• prev: difference with preceding revision
• timestamp, e.g. 12:47, 25 February 2025: moment in time the edit was published
• Username:
  • who created the edit and link to their local wiki user page. If red, this denotes they have a global wiki account but do not yet have a Wikidata account.
  • (talk: a link to their local wiki talk page
  • |contribs): a list of all edits made by this user (default: local Wiki)
• m: indicates a minor edit; usually only superficial changes since the previous revision (formatting error, typographical correction(.
• (1,234 bytes): This shows the current size of the page.
• (+1000), (+100) or (-1000), (-100): These indicate the change in size from the last revision. Green indicates an increase and red a decrease. Bold shows a large or major edit/change in size.
• (Editor's comment from the edit view summary box): a descriptive comment about the edit to help other editors quickly understand it without needing to review it. See Help:Edit Summary
• undo: revert this edit to its previous state.
• thank: publicly thank the editor for their contribution
• Tag: can provide extra context on how, where and/or what has created the edit. They can be automatically applied such as wikidata-ui and mobile edit, to show the edit occurred through the regular Wikidata interface or mobile skin, respectively, or mw-reverted to show the edit has been reverted by a later edit. They can also indicate the edit was created by a particular tool or bot, such as OAuth CID: 1776, which refers to the QuickStatements tool.

Custom edit summaries can be specified using the EditSum user script or external tools such as QuickStatements. Developers using the Wikibase API can specify an edit summary with the summary parameter.

MediaWiki's built-in search function doesn't include edit summaries, and these summaries aren't indexed by external search engines. There is an unofficial external tool for filtering by edit summaries in Wikimedia projects at Wikimedia Labs: edit summary search (enter wikidatawiki into the "Database" field). Also, hashtags (like #tag) can be searched at https://hashtags.wmflabs.org.