Should Wikipedia editors always provide an edit summary?

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Some language editions of Wikipedia require editors to provide an edit summary (and use talk page notifications for editors who don't do so). Is that a good practice? The question is formulated as about Wikipedia, but is expected to be applicable to a large extent to other wikis as well.

For instance, the English Wikipedia states: "Always provide an edit summary".

Wikipedia editors should always provide an edit summary

Pro

• Pro Edit summaries make it easier to review editing histories and find changes one is looking for.
  • Objection That is not the case with edit summaries like "expand", "tweak" or "change".
    • Objection One could extend this to e.g. "editors should always provide a descriptive useful edit summary" which would require that users provide an edit summary
    • Objection As little as these edit summaries say, they still stand in contrast to e.g. "format" and they are cheap to type and review.
• Pro An editor writing an edit summary can review the changes against it and perhaps realize the edit is incomplete. There is some strange edit-enhancing effect of writing edit summaries.
• Pro Expanding on the above, edit summaries often force the editor to get clear about what the edit is trying to achieve.
  • Objection This may well be true about often, but that does not entail to provide an edit summary always.
    • Objection Having a uniform policy to always provide edit summary leads to the habit of writing one and is easier to administer than a rule that requires editors to sometimes enter an edit summary but does not say when.
      • Objection One can formulate a meaningful rule for when the edit summaries are mandatory, e.g. when something unobvious is happening or when material is being removed. Such a policy is not too long to grasp and remember.
• Pro Establishing the requirement of edit summaries makes patrolling (watching for suspect edits and reverting them as appropriate) easier.

Con

• Con Edit summaries are of low value for edits that are likely to be uncontroversial.
  • Objection Even if they are of low value, the question is whether the low value is worth the arguably low effort.
    • Objection Good edit summaries take some thought and attention. The kind of edit summaries that are low effort are also those with the least value.
• Con The projects requiring edit summaries often see edit summaries like "expand", which reveals almost nothing. Thus, forcing editors to provide edit summaries is likely to lead to too many near-worthless edit summaries anyway.
  • Objection The project could require editors to provide telling/informative edit summaries.
• Con Edit summaries provide additional opportunity for misstatement/error, including typos.
• Con AI can be used to enable other editors to always see an edit summary even if the user does not provide one
•  Comment For the cases where edit summaries are really valuable, they should be strongly recommended, but that is different from requiring them always.

Further reading

• Wikipedia:cs: Template:Shrnutí -- a template in Czech Wikipedia used on talk pages of users, reminding them to fill edit summary