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.

pinkampersand.wikimedia wrote:

(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.

If this task is going to remain open it should likely cover adding summaries when making any changes in the UI..

https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikidata/2015-July/006786.html

Ricordisamoa: I looked at your solution as well and I first didn't see it at all. It is disconnected from the actual task the editor is doing. I also believe storing the edit summary across edits will lead to many wrong edit summaries. I don't think this is the UI concept we can go with for the final solution unfortunately.

If my edit is simple enough that "5 to 7 default explanations" cover it, it's probably obvious enough it could be without a summary. I guess that might cover specifically "why I am removing this link", but I'd like to explain, for example, why I'm changing a label. That's something I can't do at all presently from the UI AFAICT - no reference fields (why? some labels can most definitely be referenced) and no way to explain why I think label X is better than label Y, so people just need to trust me.

This feature has been requested several times when adding Wikibase to OpenStreetMap wiki. I think the very first step we can already do is to make it possible for gadgets to add edit summary string during the "save" command. This way we can experiment with the UI implementation.

What is the recommended way for gadgets to dynamically modify POST parameters?

Here's a working implementation using the browser's prompt text box, based on the original idea by @Ricordisamoa. Copy it into your https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:___username___/common.js page. Note that the save will happen even if the user clicks Cancel because there is no good way to abort saving without crashing. This code can be directly used as a gadget.

/*
 * EditWikidataSummary.js
 * @author [[User:Yurik]] based on code by [[User:Ricordisamoa]]
 */
( function( $, mw, window ) {
  $( function () {
    if( !mw.config.exists( 'wbEntityId' ) ) {
      return;
    }
    mw.hook('wikibase.entityPage.entityView.rendered').add(function () {
      oldPost = wb.api.RepoApi.prototype._post;
  
      wb.api.RepoApi.prototype._post = function ( params ) {
        if ( params.summary === undefined ) {
          var summary = window.prompt('Enter edit summary (optional):', '');
          if ( summary ) {
            params.summary = summary;
          }
        }
        return oldPost.call( this, params );
      };
    } );
  } );
} )( jQuery, mediaWiki, window );