Help:Dummy edit

A dummy edit is a change in wikitext that has no effect on the rendered page, of which the purpose is to save a useful edit summary.

A null edit is a similar technique, but a null edit does not modify pages at all, and its purpose is to purge a page cache. On the other hand, a dummy edit does change the page source, although slightly.

Purposes
By a dummy edit, an edit summary can be supplemented, aiming at:
 * messaging.
 * correcting a previous edit summary such as an accidental marking of a previous edit as "minor" (see Help:Minor edit).
 * a note by a logged-in account that a previous edit made by an IP was that user editing while unintentionally logged out.
 * a user who does not wish to contribute and yet wishes to provide proof of activity from time to time may execute a dummy edit in his own talk page with no useful edit summary

Sending a short message via the edit summary ("SMS") is one way of communicating with other editors if there is no need to create a new thread for the message. Text messages may be seen by dotted IP number editors who do not have a user talk page, or editors who have not read the subject's talk page, if it exists. Each edit summary can hold 250 bytes; the input box for an edit summary is limited to 200 characters.

Methods

 * Changing the number of newlines in the edit text. Changing a space to a line break in running text or vice versa; or adding or removing a single blank line after a header.
 * Adding an extra blank line where there was none is not a dummy edit in general, which may add a paragraph break.
 * Adding newlines to the end of the article will not serve as a dummy edit; that change won't be saved, so it will be a null edit.


 * Changing the number of spaces. Changing one space character to two or more (or vice versa) also has no effect on the rendered page. Multiple space characters always render as a single space, unless the line begins with a leading space.
 * Adding an HTML comment. For example, adding  to a page will not affect its presentation.

Note that an attempt of a dummy edit may not be really dummy if done incautiously – for example, excess blank lines can result in inadvertent paragraph breaks. It may also make the page more difficult to edit if dummy edits make the text poorly spaced (for example, between two words in a sentence).