The Water Cooler

4:41 PM

Jeebus. Why was this edited: workplace.stackexchange.com/posts/33296/revisions

It seems stylistic, and I usually start my answers off with a lead in.

5:13 PM

I had a similar thing happen, same user a few weeks ago.

Q: Should I remove 'fluff' when editing questions?

5:29 PM

Someone approved it, why?

BTW, I put it back in.

enderland

5:51 PM

you guys might enjoy reading this

118

When I edit questions I typically focus on style, grammar, and spelling. However, in the process I often also remove 'fluff' like: This may be simple but, ... or Can you help me with this? I do so when I think it will make the question more direct and readable, but I also wonder if pr...

discussion edits etiquette

6:17 PM

I think "how do I ask my manager about this thing that affects the workplace" is on-topic. Most of us are probably fortunate enough to have not had this particular problem, but that doesn't make it off-topic. Answers (and any other discussion) should focus on the workplace aspects, not the fiancee's condition. — Monica Cellio ♦ yesterday

^^^ This comment has 27 upvotes. The closed question it's on has zero reopen votes.

@MikeVanTrufflebutt no approval; it was a direct edit.

6:35 PM

@MikeVanTrufflebutt congratulations, that "stylistic" part just gained you a vote down from me. Per my reading, it's not 100% fluff like discussed in question referred by @enderland above (otherwise I'd simply flagged for moderator to bring things in order), but it's... void enough to damage an (otherwise fairly reasonable) answer

@gnat please do not flag to ask for edits that you can make yourself. I can't speak for the rest of the team, but I will generally decline those on "you didn't need to make this my problem" grounds. If there's a dispute or if something is blatantly offensive or something like that, of course, that's different. (This is a general comment, not a comment on this particular case.)

@MonicaCellio I flag when I believe there is a rollback war (FWIW this is not the case in the post we discuss). And... guess what, I prefer to overflag in cases like that. I'd rather do (and actually already did) an edit after flag decline (having a proof that moderator considers this okay) than risk an extra round of emotionally charged rollbacks

7:11 PM

@gnat My stylistic portion did have a purpose. It correlated the term "freelancer" to a term more commonly used in my experience, "consultant". As such, I downvote your downvote. :-P

@gnat for a rollback war flagging is good, thanks. Didn't realize that's what you were referring to.

@gnat It also provided a lead-in identifying what my response was directed toward.

@MonicaCellio There's no rollback war going on, as gnat indicated.

7:25 PM

@MikeVanTrufflebutt generally I have nothing against lead-ins. And your is not totally useless, you have a point here. It's only that due to edit and rollback I had a chance to directly compare this particular answer with and without lead-in and without it, it just looked so much better (again, I'm not saying that it would be generally so, in some other answer it could be opposite)

@MikeVanTrufflebutt right, no rollback war here; I understand him to be talking about a case when he would flag rather than edit, and that's a case where I agree flagging is the right thing to do. I thought he was talking about flagging to request a (regular) edit, which I discourage, but that's not what he meant. It's all good.

@MonicaCellio right, we're on the same wavelength now. I don't flag for mods to do edits that I'm perfectly capable of myself. After all, these bring shiny badges (I need 70 more edits to get Copy Editor here:)

I'm a bit new so here's a learning moment for me. I don't like those types of edits. Edits that remove a posters content. There is another one on that thread. I just happened to catch it when I was looking. I think TWP has questions that call for more verbose answers and thus won't/shouldn't conform to some of the other Exchange communities policies regarding responsible amounts of exposition.

It's one thing if you're repairing a question, but the edit to @MikeVanTrufflebutt to me was not necessary.

If I'm wrong, so be it but I would like to understand.

discussion editing aggressive-edits

5

Q: Aggressive Edits

Update 3 weeks following this discussion, the question has been closed, is sitting at -2 score, and has two answers with a combined +1 score. This is not to say "I told you so", but rather to say that if the community disagrees with an aggressive edit, I would strongly invite thos...

^^^ this culture is rather endemic to Workplace, at other sites I frequent attitude differs (although not very much). It can take a while to get used to and a bit extra while to learn to appreciate it

@gnat I think questions and answers are different in this regard (and especially closed, downvoted questions). Questions are the platform we hang answers on, and while all content belongs to the community, I think questions belong a little more to the community, if that makes sense.

7:39 PM

@MonicaCellio yes that's certainly so. Still, the attitude "leaks" somewhat from question edits into answers (one can't realistically expect an active editor to radically change their mind between edits)

Ok, so now, @gnat will you please take away that ridiculous downvote? :-P

it also helps that, as opposed to sites like SO, our posts aren't about code, where single char can change everything

My writing style tends to be a bit long winded, so if someone throws an edit on my question that summarizes my ramble, well fine. However when you remove something from my post that I was using for support or as a method to communicate my answer that's a different story.

@Gnat That is what I was getting at.

A: Are the Downvoting police too active?

8

Some of these questions were valid, though they could have been written better. But is that enough reason to mark them down? Sure. There are other reasons to downvote something, but "hard to read" is legit. This isn't some grade-school essay contest where you get points just for completing t...

^^^ unlikely

To what @MonicaCellio was saying, I think aggressive edits to an answer are different than ones to a question. Again, I could be wrong here.

7:48 PM

@Bmo my writing style usually has a lead-in, if you looks at my answers they almost always are present and serve a number of purposes. Directly editing them doesn't hurt the answer, but rarely helps them. That said, my grammar is suck and I spll poorlee, so those helpful edits are always welcome. :-)

@MikeVanTrufflebutt oh yea, grammer edits are fine.

Q: I don't want to get in an edit war - people haven't read the previous reason - what to do?

8:11 PM

FWIW over there at Programmers, editing non-substantial stuff out of the answers isn't considered criminal either (although it doesn't fly as easy as at Workplace)...

4

This answer has a voluntary typo by the author, yet people keep correcting it. I've explained in the edit reason why it should be kept, and it's already been rolled back. I'm not sure what I should do. On the one hand, the content is community-owned, especially if the edits keep coming (since it...

discussion editing

Edits should be made freely when they improve a post. Grammar, formatting, applying some organizational structure to walls of text, etc -- those are all non-controversial, I expect. Then there are matters of style; if there are multiple valid approaches, you shouldn't edit somebody else's to apply your own style. Again, I hope, not controversial.

Then we get to things like the present discussion; an editor viewed something as extraneous and removed it, and the author disagrees that it was extraneous and rolled it back. These disagreements will happen and sometimes get discussed, as now, and ultimately the author gets the last word.

I wouldn't have made this edit myself, I think I understand why the editor did make it, and I understand @bmo's point about why he thinks it went too far. I personally wouldn't downvote a post that I otherwise agreed with for a small intro like that, but people's votes are theirs to do with as they like.

@gnat, if there is a less-extreme edit that you think would help, I encourage you to suggest it to Bmo -- it could make both of you happy in the end. If that seems like too much, then shrug and move on.

@MonicaCellio what recourse do we have if someone's edits do the opposite of embiggening our post?

@MikeVanTrufflebutt if you think somebody else's edit to your own post has damaged it -- taken away important content, didn't respect the author's voice/style, etc -- then you are free to roll it back. But people making edits are trying to help, so I encourage you to examine the edit and see if there is a kernel of truth there, a smaller edit that would address whatever prompted the editor to act without damaging your post. Think collaboration.

And if somebody starts an edit war, flag that.

If a post has severe problems and an author won't accept edits, it's possible that the community will downvote or even delete the post, depending on what the problem is. I hope that disagreements can be resolved without that happening, but sometimes it does.

(You get somebody who's here to grind his particular axe and just wants to rant, for instance -- that won't cut it. I'm not saying anybody here has done anything like that.)

@MonicaCellio YOu mean gnat, right?

8:32 PM

@MikeVanTrufflebutt I was speaking generally. On some other sites I've seen people post long ranty diatribes as answers, and people edit them in an effort to save them as answers at all, and the author reverts and then the community downvotes it to oblivion or deletes it. We've probably had that here; can't recall an example off hand. Anyway, that's the sort of thing I was talking about -- not this post or anything that you or @gnat did. Sorry for the confusion.

8:46 PM

NO worries, I was just picking on him on accounta he downvoted me. :-)

8:57 PM

Ah, gotcha. So, you should know that votes are locked in after something like 5 minutes, until there's another edit. He can't remove his downvote now even if he wants to. On the other hand, if there is some improvement you can make to the post...

@MonicaCellio Its fine. Now, whenever I have a need to use someone as a demonstration in a response, instead of "Say your manager, John Doe, did something goofy", I will now use him "Say your manager, Gnat, did something goofy".

9:12 PM

Trying to save a good question... Could someone check my edits for: workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/33323/… ?

Thankyuou.