Since MediaWiki 1.25 I see that during editing a page with the normal wiki editor, it makes a POST request to api.php, passing a action=stashedit
Since it's a POST request, it's somewhat difficult to see what's the specific api action it triggers. Also, looking at the RELEASE NOTES for 1.25 I don't see anything obvious about it, except this:
- Edits are now prepared via AJAX as users type edit summaries. This behavior can be disabled via $wgAjaxEditStash.
Well, that's not even accurate, since the POST request is made when focusing the textarea, not the edit summary. What does "Edits are now prepared" actually mean? If I focus the text area, what's the purpose of sending the textarea contents if I haven't even started to modify it? What's the benefit of "preparing an edit" that outcomes the additional server load?
Manual:$wgAjaxEditStash is more of the same, it doesn't explain anything useful, apart that saying you can disable it. No documentation about benefits, what won't work if you disable this feature, etc
See also:
- T119779: Force re-parsing on save even if it was parsed for preview - Some extensions may need to differentiate preview and normal view in parser cache, document how and when to do this