Last modified: 2014-08-11 10:56:13 UTC
Filing here per Lydia's suggestion at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Contact_the_development_team#Link_removals. The purpose is to make it easier to determine the reason that a link has been removed, and whether the removal was correct, a test, or vandalism. I think the best way would be if the summary box would pop up just like the error message or the CC0 notification box, whenever someone clicks "remove" or blanks the field and clicks "save". Editors should be allowed (but discouraged) to leave no summary at all, and ideally there'd be some drop-down options, perhaps with a second field to link to another item, that would appear if you chose certain options (e.g. "merging with..." or "correcting interwiki conflict with..."); you would be able to use a custom summary instead, though. (Preferably a custom summary that you'd be able to select later on, just like with normal summaries.)
In my opinion this is a wrong approach, the user should never write edit summaries manually.
Maybe a drop-down menu with predefinite reasons. In this way is also translatable.
(In reply to comment #1) > In my opinion this is a wrong approach, the user should never write edit > summaries manually. Well, users already do, when using the "undo" and "restore" features. The reason for that is presumably that when reverting someone else, you should generally give an explanation. Well I'd say that the same goes for removing a link. Still, if people are really opposed to allowing custom summaries, can we at least implement the drop-down part?
It is currently possible to add custom summaries when using the API. Not possible in the UI currently.
