Difference Between a Regular Edit and a Minor Edit in MediaWiki

Regular Edit: Any edit without the "This is a minor edit" checkbox selected. It’s treated as a substantive change by default, signaling that the edit might involve significant content alterations (e.g., adding new sections, rewriting text).

Minor Edit: An edit where the user checks "This is a minor edit." It’s intended for small, non-substantive changes, like fixing typos, adjusting formatting, correcting grammar, or making trivial updates (e.g., updating a date). MediaWiki’s guidelines (e.g., on Help:Minor edit) suggest reserving this for changes that don’t alter the meaning of the page significantly.

The checkbox is a way for the editor to communicate the nature of their change to others. It’s a convention rather than a strict rule, though some wikis enforce policies about when it should be used.

When you save an edit (minor or regular), MediaWiki stores it in the revision table. The "minor edit" flag is stored as a single bit in the revision table. The database operations (inserts, updates) are identical in complexity and resource use whether the edit is minor or regular.

Minor edits appear in the page history just like regular edits, but they’re marked with an "m" next to the revision (e.g., in the diff view or history list). This helps users quickly identify small changes. The full text and metadata of a minor edit are preserved, so the history remains intact. You can view, compare, or revert minor edits the same as regular ones.

Marking an edit as minor signals to others that it’s low-impact, which can influence how it’s reviewed or prioritized. Misusing it for major changes might annoy other editors, but that’s a social convention, not a technical limit.

Database performance or storage used is unaffected by the minor edit flag as it is a lightweight filter applied post retrieval.