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I don’t care about the downvotes but I hate when people make misguided attempts to “improve” old answers. The most recent was someone who went in and removed u
by dietrichepp 4y ago
I don’t care about the downvotes but I hate when people make misguided attempts to “improve” old answers.
The most recent was someone who went in and removed use of the word “you” as an attempt to “depersonalize” the answer. There was some kind of recognizable idea behind the edits, but the user’s changes mostly just damaged the readability and made the answers more convoluted.
The editor argued with me and linked to a meta post—which they wrote! This was a multi-page essay which explains, in depth, the rationale for these awful edits.
The user argued that “you” is not used in good, professional documentation. This is, as far as I can tell, completely false and within seconds of pulling up various samples of good documentation I was able to find dozens of examples of “you”.
Another user, years ago, would start fights and argue with anyone, saying that “standard C” only referred to the current C standard, and any previous editions of C were no longer “standard”. The user would insist upon removing the C tag from any question about C90, for example.
The more you answer or ask questions, the more likely it is that you get into conflict with one of these horrible, horrible users.
- phpisthebest 4y ago[flagged]
- dietrichepp 4y agoUnlike Reddit mods, anyone with sufficient rep is granted the edit power on SO.
- dotancohen 4y agoJust wait until you see the Wikipedia mods.
- indirecTid 4y ago[dead]
- fabian2k 4y agoDecline the edit suggestion or roll back if the edit is not an improvement. You don't have to argue here for edits that are not obvious and clear improvements. If the user repeats these edits, just flag for mod attention. Edit wars can be stopped easily by diamond moderators.
- dietrichepp 4y agoI did roll back, and the user started an edit war with me and I flagged it for moderator intervention. I didn’t see a response from a diamond mod.
- fabian2k 4y agoYou usually won't see a response, the moderator will either lock the post or more likely warn the user to stop the edit war and if necessary will suspend the user.
- dietrichepp 4y agoInteresting. I dug through my inbox and was able to find the answer, and evidence of the edit war itself is gone, except for the actual edit history. The comments have been removed. (Good riddance, but the process is less transparent for me.)
- fabian2k 4y agoThe actions to warn and suspend users are kinda intentionally invisible or at least less visible. The idea is not to publicly shame the users and to let them come back and continue to participate without attaching a public black mark to their account. So you usually won't see a direct response when you flag something except that your flag is declared valid and the problem is resolved in some way. The SO mods also handle thousands of flags per day, so they're even less chatty than mods on smaller sites might be.
- ryathal 4y agoThe edit thing is a self imposed problem because the site gamification for established Stack* sites mandates that people edit questions to get enough reputation for basic site functionality. Actually asking or answering a question is far too difficult for a new user, especially on SO.
- dietrichepp 4y agoI looked it up. Accepted edit suggestions are only +2 per edit and cap at +1000 for your entire account. A single upvote on a question or answer is worth 5 edits. I honestly don't see the point in throwing yourself at edits to grind out rep. Grinding out rep by answering questions may be slow work but at least you're directly helping someone who had a problem.
- ilaksh 4y agoI have 334 answers (the last was in 2019) and only one that is popular. It's from more than a decade ago. I looked at tonight and there is was an edit on January 26. But from a glance there is nothing different from what's it's been for years. So it must have been a trivial edit.