Edit check/Configuration

Wikimedia Foundation projects Edit check Offer people actionable feedback about Wikipedia policies while they are editing. Group: Editing Start: 2022-10-01 Team members: Benoît Evellin, David Chan, David Lynch, Esther Akinloose, Marielle Volz, Rummana Yasmeen, Nicolas Ayoub Backlog: #EditCheck Lead: Ed Sanders Management: Peter Pelberg (product), Valerie Puffet-Michel (engineering)

Edit check offers people actionable feedback about Wikipedia policies while they are editing.

This page strives to equip experienced volunteers with the information they need to ensure Edit Check is configured in ways that will promote the nuances of each project's policies and conventions.

On-wiki configuration

See also: Community configuration

Edit Check can be configured in some ways on-wiki by local administrators by editing the MediaWiki:Editcheck-config.json message. This will be null initially, signifying that it is unconfigured and the Edit Check defaults should apply completely.

The message must be valid JSON , or it will be ignored and the defaults will be applied. Any unspecified values will be filled in with the default values.

Reference check configuration

The default configuration values are as follows:

{
    "addReference": {
        "minimumCharacters": 50,
        "beforePunctuation": false,
        "account": false,
        "maximumEditcount": 100,
        "ignoreSections": [],
        "ignoreLeadSection": false
    }
}

Any of these values can be overwritten on the wiki if required.

An example of a valid configuration message is:

{
    "addReference": {
        "minimumCharacters": 40,
        "beforePunctuation": true,
        "ignoreSections": [ "External links", "Unsupported claims", "Discussion" ],
        "ignoreLeadSection": true
    }
}

This would change the minimum number of characters required before the Reference Check triggers to 40, and have it insert its citations before the terminal punctuation rather than after.

Configurable values

As of 2023, the configurable values are in flux. The best reference right now is the $defaults array in the config-loading code.

If a parameter is not used in the local configuration, then its default value is used.

minimumCharacters

The smallest string of consecutive characters that will prompt a recommendation to add a citation. This should generally be small enough to trigger for most additions of significant new information, but big enough not to trigger for copyediting, in the local language. As of 2023, the default is 50 characters.

beforePunctuation

Specify whether the citation should appear before a sentence's terminal punctuation (style used at the French Wikipedia: "Sentence.") or after it (style used at the English Wikipedia: "Sentence."). The default is false, resulting in the style used at most Wikipedias, including the English Wikipedia.

account

Specify which account state the edit check should apply to. Valid values are "loggedin", "loggedout", or false. The default is false, resulting in the edit check applying to all users.

maximumEditcount

Specify a threshold for the number of changes at which Edit Check is activated. The default is 100, meaning that the edit check will only be shown to users with 100 edits or fewer. If this value is not defined, the default value is used. The number of edits is based on user edit count, edits from all namespaces are taken into account.

ignoreSections

An array of section titles, which will be compared case-insensitively to headings. If a heading matches an item in this array, all content within that section will be ignored for checks. The default is an empty array ([]).

Each section title has to be between ", separated by a ,: ["External links", "Unsupported claims", "Discussion"].

ignoreLeadSection

A boolean. If true, the content of the lead section will be ignored for checks. A lead section is defined as content in an article with at least one heading that precedes the first heading. The default is false.

Site-level configuration

These values can be set in the site-level configuration in LocalSettings.php.

Config	Meaning	Default
VisualEditorEditCheck	Enables the feature	false
VisualEditorEditCheckTagging	Tags edits made related to edit check features	false

Getting help

• Any interface administrator at your wiki can configure this. You can find a list of interface admins on your wiki by searching for Special:ListUsers/interface-admin. You can find a list of other admins on your wiki by searching for Special:ListAdmins.
• If your Wikipedia does not have any interface administrators, you can request help at m:Steward requests/Miscellaneous.
• If your wiki is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation but is not a Wikipedia, you will need to request that Edit Check be deployed at your wiki. Please follow the process at m:Requesting wiki configuration changes. Tag the Phabricator ticket with all the following tags: #editcheck, #wikimedia-site-requests.