User blog comment:Sarah Manley/New Editor Scheduled for Sitewide Release/@comment-188432-20110908232732/@comment-188432-20110909054720

Well, yeah, I could elect to stop a submission without an edit summary, sure. I dunno how many new editors know that, but, yeah, I'll grant that the feature does exist.

Now, I haven't tested yet to see what happens if you have that feature enabled, and then you hit publish on the preview lightbox, without having text in the edit summary. In other words, I don't know if the publish button the preview lightbox respects the "warn if there's no edit summary" tick mark. I suppose we should check that at some point.

But none of that's really my point.

It's not even an option to leave an edit summary if you use the publish button in the new preview lightbox. That's one of the reasons there shouldn't 'be' a publish button on the lightbox. Alternately, there should be an edit summary area in the lightbox.

It is a design flaw that the default condition of the edit page allows people to submit a page without being offered a chance to enter an edit summary at the point of submission. You can't force people to enter an edit sumary, but it should always be there. This new edit page is giving people the excuse, "I couldn't enter an edit summary because the system wouldn't let me." That's obviously not good. This will create a lot of bad blood between editors, especially on hotly-contested articles, where edit summaries go a long way to relieving tensions.