21
votes
Accepted
Can I correct grammar in questions/answers even if the message is clear?
Even if it is by a small amount, corrections like these still improve the clarity of the post. However, I would encourage you to follow the advice of the help page, and look to see if there are any ...
ChrisMod
- 17.1k
17
votes
Accepted
Discouraging serial editors
Users cannot gain more than 2k reputation from edits, cf. the "Can I earn reputation?" section here, so there is a natural and rather low limit to such "farming". Note that once ...
ACuriousMindMod
- 122k
16
votes
Accepted
Cases in which self-edits are an unethical mean to generate attention
There is nothing unethical about a minor edit, if it improves the post. The practice of bumping posts by edits is only problematic if the edits don't actually improve the post (e.g. only add ...
ACuriousMindMod
- 122k
15
votes
Accepted
Editing my own stuff get me suspended?
Well, you were suspended last time around for posting low-quality questions (which are a problem because they create work and annoyance for other members of the site) and making scores of edits that ...
- 101
14
votes
Is it okay to edit a question (on the main site) to downvote it after you initially upvoted it?
Please use edits to substantially improve the posts they are attached to.
Please do not use trivial edits as backdoors to enable site features that are inaccessible to you for some reason.
robMod
- 86.3k
13
votes
Can I correct grammar in questions/answers even if the message is clear?
Yes, please do. Such changes make the site easier to use for all readers.
robMod
- 86.3k
13
votes
Discouraging serial editors
I think you're being unkind when you assume the purpose is to farm reputation.
I suspect I know the user you mean since I've been seeing a lot of suggested edits that consisted mostly of adding links ...
- 351k
13
votes
Accepted
What do you think about editors editing your English form in the questions?
Edits that improve the grammar or spelling of posts are unquestionably welcome. StackExchange sites generally have a far weaker notion of "ownership" of posts than many other websites, and ...
ACuriousMindMod
- 122k
12
votes
Accepted
Should cosmetic edits be made to a closed question?
With the remodeling of the review queues, users now have the option to explicitly mark their edits to closed questions as significant enough to warrant reopen reviews.
So, as long as the editors ...
ACuriousMindMod
- 122k
11
votes
Accepted
Why are some edits automatically rejected?
On both this edit and this one, the edit was rejected because a user with full editing privileges (i.e. 2k+ reputation) started editing before you submitted your edit, as detailed on this Meta Stack ...
- 131k
11
votes
Meta-commentary in questions should sometimes be allowed
If you're not satisfied with my answer, you're under no obligation or expectation to accept it. We all write answers that aren't accepted all the time, and I've also written many questions to which I ...
- 101k
11
votes
Accepted
How to treat suggested edits that "correct a formula"?
I don't think formulae are really special in this regard:
If you see an edit but you cannot tell whether it actually improves the post or not, skip it. Whether that's because you're not familiar with ...
ACuriousMindMod
- 122k
10
votes
Is an asker's age relevant?
No, I do not think that a statement of the OP's age should be edited out, or (as DavidZ suggests) replaced with a statement identifying the type of answer requested. In my opinion this is an ...
- 27.1k
9
votes
Is it OK to change commas to narrow no-break spaces in numbers when editing a post?
From our editing guidelines:
Edits are expected to be substantial and to leave the post better than you found it. Common reasons for edits include:
To fix grammar and spelling mistakes
To ...
robMod
- 86.3k
9
votes
Accepted
Should I edit question to format equation linked as image in MathJax?
Yes, you should edit and/or leave a comment in these cases because
Images are fixed size and will display poorly in small browser windows, particularly on phones.
MathJax is searchable, although the ...
ACuriousMindMod
- 122k
9
votes
Accepted
What should be done about this question and questions like this, where the OP is just received misguided information?
Questions founded on a misunderstanding of something are a work-a-day reality of teaching physics and on Physics Stack Exchange.
If you have the time and inclination, then correct the ...
9
votes
Accepted
Why did somebody change my quotation marks?
I can only guess, but here are my guesses:
As for why the edit suggested changing the quotation marks: plain text does not allow for proper (curly) quotation marks, so the ...
- 75.8k
9
votes
Accepted
Should I not edit my old questions on a spree?
Yes, you should avoid flooding the front page. I recommend doing them in small batches of say 2 or 3 posts at a time.
- 10.9k
9
votes
Accepted
Should contributions to the community be made compulsory?
Should contributions to the community be made compulsory?
Absolutely not. No way. Hell no.
Contributing to this site is done on a volunteer basis. If people want to contribute by writing answers, ...
- 131k
9
votes
Accepted
Is mass editing of old posts encouraged?
Is making a large number of edits to old questions in a short time frame encouraged,
NO.
Editing old questions is indeed encouraged, in the understanding that
if the thread was inactive and editing ...
- 131k
9
votes
The proposed changes to the text editor would break this site
Here is one option put forward by the SE developers: switching from MathJax to prosemirror-math. For a quick look at how it works, I'll just pull this from their readme:
Examples
Unlike other editors,...
- 131k
9
votes
Should editors share the punishment for downvotes?
No.
If the edits were accepted then presumably the edits were considered improvements. The question of when downvotes occur rarely depends on edits: assuming the edits are good, this question would ...
- 45k
8
votes
Accepted
Vote locked in till the answer or question is edited
You can get notified when posts are edited by using the Stack Overflow Extras extension script. However it's been declined on the mother meta.
If you were able to change your vote on a post as much ...
- 75.8k
8
votes
Confusion about rejection of edit suggestion
Specific to the case that you brought up, I'd note that the OP on your post made a different, unrelated edit to the question about 1 minute after yours. I can imagine a scenario where the OP was ...
- 4,829
8
votes
Editing a question invalidating answers
As someone who flagged this issue, I'll give my perspective here.
For one thing, it seems really strange to me that you mention that Cort Ammon, Bill Watts, and Dale's answers being invalidated, yet ...
- 15.2k
8
votes
Improvement of a poor question by non-authors
In general, if the owner of a post has provided clear information in the comments under it, then I feel it is perfectly acceptable to incorporate that information into the post itself.
This assumes, ...
- 131k
8
votes
Accepted
Is this a bug with editing posts?
The comment broke the grace period.
According to ex-CM Shog9's answer,
Edits will be rolled into the previous revision if the previous revision was created by the same author and none of the ...
- 123
7
votes
Accepted
Why need to edit when edited and unedited versions have the same final look but different TEX?
When it comes to comparing
$5$ $m/s$
$5\,\mathrm{m/s}$
As ACuriousMind said, they don't look the same. In the first one, "m" and "s" will be italic (representing ...
- 75.8k
7
votes
Cascade of mostly trivial edits by a user
I also assume that member decided to go on an edit spree of old high scoring posts to earn a few points. When I noticed the front page getting flooded, I sent them this comment, which I also posted in ...
- 10.9k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible