This is surprisingly tricky. However, I've started off by adding a 'body' helper method for trackbacks that is a convenience method for excerpt. Plan is to track down the various uses of excerpt, replace 'em with calls to 'body' and once that's done get rid of excerpt.

Actually do not think this should be done, instead think it should be utilized.

Excerpt is nice for plugins and could be useful for sidebars.

On a blog I am doing for some I utilize the excerpt field for a short custom description for an article that is displayed on the home page.

Easy way to use is add the following code to: app/views/admin/content/_form.html.erb

<li>
<label for="article_excerpt"><%= _("Excerpt")%>:</label>
<%= t_textarea 'article', 'excerpt', {:height => '100', :style => 'width : 100%'} %>
</li>