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It's generally accepted by the community at Stack Overflow that you don't edit other people's answers except to make improvements to formatting and punctuation.
by cruise02 13y ago
It's generally accepted by the community at Stack Overflow that you don't edit other people's answers except to make improvements to formatting and punctuation. Changing the code should be left to the original author of the post, as that changes the meaning of the answer. The people who rejected the edit probably didn't notice that it was the same person who suggested the edit.
Mike could have avoided that by just using the same account to edit his original post. You can always edit your own work without it going through the review process.
- bryanlarsen 13y agoThe biggest problem with this convention is that new & anonymous users cannot comment, so the only option they have is to edit the post. These then get rejected out of hand and useful contributions disappear. This is doubly wasteful since this behaviour often discourages people from every contributing again.
- cruise02 13y agoNo, new and anonymous users do have another option, they can post their own answer. That's irrelevant anyway, since that's not what happened here. The author of the post tried to edit his own answer with a second account. He should have just used his original account and this would have never happened.
- bryanlarsen 13y agoNo, new and anonymous users do have another option, they can post their own answer. Which is less wrong than an edit but it`s still wrong when the appropriate response is a comment. A community can be judged by it`s responses to newbies. By this measure it fails miserably since the most common feedback many newbies get from SO are bare downvotes and rejections. What should happen is a polite response explaining the problem and the what should be done to correct it.
- cruise02 13y agoThe appropriate response was an edit by the author with his original account, not a comment.
- aaronem 13y agoSpeaking as a contributor and reviewer on Super User and Stack Overflow, your opinion of what should happen is shared by more or less everyone who is an established member of the community. The trouble is that there are a lot of newbies, many of whom don't take time either to read the "about" and "how to ask good questions" advice which the sites make prominently available for new users, or to characterize their problem in sufficient detail to make it solvable, or to search for the trivially obvious answer to whatever question they're asking. Once you've seen enough of this sort of thing -- and, again, especially on the highly popular sites there is a lot of it -- there's a certain fatigue which sets in; you get jaded, I suppose, and that seems from what I've seen to be the proximate cause for newbie questions getting downvoted to oblivion or flagged for closure without anyone taking a moment to advise the asker on what he should've done differently. Is this ideal? Of course not; in fact, it's not even close, and I say that as someone who has considerable experience with the phenomenon so described. But Stack Exchange sites are moderated by volunteers, and you can't issue ukazes to volunteers without a significant risk of losing them -- after all, if you make them not want to do what they do, they'll just stop doing it. In any case, just as a community can be judged by its attitude toward newbies, so can those newbies be judged by their attitude toward the community in which they attempt to participate. As in any other such case, it is entirely reasonable for those who have invested time and effort into Stack Exchange sites to expect that new users will deport themselves with respect for the rules and mores of the community. With regard to giving the ability to comment to new and unregistered users, there's a problem similar to that of low-quality newbie questions; so to broaden the provision of commenting privilege would produce an instant and enduring deluge of spam. You really can't expect volunteers to handle sewage disposal, especially when the sewage is deep enough to require hip waders. Again, this is not ideal, but it is a consequence of the Stack Exchange model's basic assumptions, and I'd have to say that model has acquitted itself well enough in practice to vindicate the claims made on its behalf.
- pygy_ 13y agoNone of that changes the fact that his valid edit was rejected by incompetent mods.
- cruise02 13y ago99.99% of the time, rejecting a suggested edit that changes code is the right thing to to. The competence of the reviewers isn't really the issue. The author should have just used his original account to make the edit and this would have been a non-issue.
- pygy_ 13y agoHe probably didn't realise he had two accounts. The incompetence of the mods is relevant because it is one of the main criticism of TFA. It's a nice example of the Pete principle. If a mod doesn't understand an answer he should just pass, not vote according to what's right most of the time. They are incompetent, both regarding LuaJIT and as moderators.
- cruise02 13y agoHow many LuaJIT experts do you suppose there are reviewing edits on Stack Overflow?
- pygy_ 13y agoHe used to be there. You can't find a better expert. I'd expect mods familiar with Lua to recognize him, and he should have mod powers, to begin with.
- cruise02 13y agoHe doesn't even recognize that he's using two separate accounts, but other people are supposed to recognize him and his accounts should have mod powers? Again, if he had just used his original account to edit his answer, he wouldn't have needed any of that.
- Shog9 13y agoFWIW, I've merged his accounts now. Probably too late, but... If he ever decides to come back, he'll be able to edit his own posts without review.
- protomyth 13y agoDid you fix the edit also?