The commit message should have the following format[1]:

Subject (MUST be < 62 chars)\n
\n
Body

Though it is not documented on the wiki page, the problem is that you were using Windows-style CR line breaks instead of LF.

Gerrit apparently only looks for LF, not CR. Which I think is fine since it is our convention not to use CR (When checking the diff in git on the command line it will warn for CR as well). Be sure to configure your editor to not use CR.

Different layers on git will do it differently. I see that on GitHub it will separate the subject by either LF or CR. Gerrit does not. You could file an upstream issue.

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/52439/2//COMMIT_MSG

[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Git/Commit_message_guidelines

Hm.. did it only start doing this *after* you edited in the browser?

Because in that case it is probably something the Gerrit inline editor should guard against by enforcing LF when saving.

Yes, the first commit was fine. Maybe the IE is inserting the wrong line seperator or the inline editor should normalize it.

See diff: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/52439/1..2//COMMIT_MSG

Confirmed using IE7 on my own copy of Gerrit running 2.5.2-1365-g7609714

Filed upstream report: https://code.google.com/p/gerrit/issues/detail?id=1830

The upstream fix was accepted in commit
109e03fe2bdd3e5420ccf88c9bc723585ffab60e

https://gerrit-review.googlesource.com/#/c/43582/

upstream fix was labeled with: FixedIn-2.6
Wikimedia is running now 2.7-rc2-507-g1e7090b, so this should be fixed.