Edit summary
From dKosopedia
An edit summary is entered with each edit on the input line labelled "summary:" just above the save page and show preview options when you edit articles.
Many new users leave this line blank. That is a serious mistake. The page history, recent changes and related changes all report this line and filling it in can save a lot of extremely annoying clicking and peering to see what changed. An accurate one-line edit summary is actually more than enough to report most small changes verbatim, and some larger changes as well.
edit summary tag
Mediawiki supports links in the summary line to make it very easy to go to the relevant pages to look up the motive for the change, verify facts, and etc. An edit summary tag is a cite link used in an edit summary to say "here's why I'm changing this". As with any edit summary such a tag helps other users look up exactly why a change was made, which reduces editorial disputes. For instance, if you have removed unnecessary capital letters or anchor text, adding [[conserve capitals]] or [[avoid anchor text]] lets others look that policy up quickly.
This is a wiki best practice of the living ontology. This page licensed CC-by-nc-sa by ECG.