"Improved" is a vague metric. In my definition of the word in the context of this board . . .

1) I contend that improvement was deemed unneeded (by the tacit approval of hundreds (thousands?) of views over a long timeframe). . .

2) that the person making the "improvement" should be more versed with the community in general before being allowed to edit in such a way (they may have realised that my post would benefit more from quotes instead of 2 g's)

3) The edits did not appreciably "improve" the post.

I believe that any original message has more value when unaltered by external hands.

and that the value of an improved message, generally, isn't worth it.

. . . based upon, of course, my contextual definition of "improved".

Abstractly related, I don't believe humanity was 'improved' by a chicken pox vaccine. I don't believe that windows 8 was improved over windows 7, I don't believe my townhome complex was improved by downing a dozen 50 yr old trees.

My metric, my bar for 'improved' is clearly a lot . . . different (higher isn't the word here) than most. A marginal improvement isn't worth the time. either make it significant or don't make it.

If @TorbenGundtofte-Bruun actually had me on a short-list of moderators, we would have been having this conversation anyway as I would have become more aware of the nature of the incremental, marginal improvements to posts, and would likely have wanted to ask the 131 rep guy to cut it out.

There seemed to be no objection to rolling back to your original style, just rolling back the other capitalization and spelling. I went ahead and restored your style, adding apostrophes to make it clear it was intentional.

People with less than 1000 rep on the site need approval from two veteran users. The system also occasionally throws in tests to make sure the approvers are paying attention and not just rubber stamping.

We have a lot of users who are not native English speakers, or who are native speakers with less education. It's sometimes difficult online to distinguish those from people who intentionally adopt a more colloquial style.

I think the important thing is that the original tone and intent of the author is preserved. It isn't a perfect system. Sometimes we make mistakes, but we can correct them and move on.

You seem to be simultaneously arguing that the edits were too insignificant and that the edits were too significant. If they're insignificant, what's there to complain about? If they're too significant, restore the original intent without losing the cosmetic improvements.

StackExchange is by nature supposed to be a collaborative site. Most everyone agrees that capitalization and spelling edits are useful. Unfortunately, that's the nature of a site moderated by consensus. Not everything goes your way. I feel your pain on that. I have severe disagreements with the consensus on topicality on programmers.SE, for example.

StackExchange isn't really a linear-in-time kind of site. Old topics are reactivated all the time, through searches or when someone creates a related question. For you, an answer has stood the test of time. For another person, it's brand new.

The editor in question made just 5 similar edits to 5 different user's posts over the course of 12 days. All approved by at least two 1000+ users, and no one else complained about their style getting cramped. He's not exactly going hog wild or targeting anyone's personal style.

too insignificant to be made, significant to me. I get that I've taken it more personally than anyone else, and i get that the greater part of this discussion is less because of the edits and more because of my reaction.

And while it would be great, I'm not tyring to get anyone to agree with me so much as understand my point of view. b'mama is the only one to have said as much.

I know what my problem is, and i proposed the change so that the same problem could be avoided by others.

It was severely annoying (to me) for the 3 reasons above. I understand that the rules (such as they are) say that it's copacetic.

C'est la vie.

guess it is time I should add this chat to my favorites

I see it as equivalent to a shopping question. You wind up with a list of online sites that are all baby name kind of sites. Which site is "best" most popular changes over time . . . which is why I put it on hold. James Snell disagrees it would seem (and although the OP hasn't said anything, I'm assuming the OP would also want it opened. What does the rest of the community thinK?

@KarlBielefeldt Well said.

@monsto There are badges offered for editing.

@KarlBielefeldt

@Beofett

@TorbenGundtofte-Bruun

I will say on Monsto's behalf that there have been a couple of times when I wondered if some of the "newbies" weren't trying for an editing badge. It is a fine line monsto is discussing here and while over-all it may not come up often, I do understand the point - I just don't know if a lot can be changed on the matter.

perhaps the badges encourage superfluous editing?

@monsto Don't overestimate my words (actual transcript). I mentioned a few people and you were one of them, but that might not mean a lot. It does not matter what hat you wear, we would still be arguing against you for wanting to ask the 131 rep guy to cut it out.

@balancedmama I don't have a problem for people going after editing badges, as long as they do so in a constructive manner <-- this is why the review queue exists, and people with enough rep to bypass that queue are inherently trusted by the system.

Some badges are "secret" in that it's not known what exactly you need to do to achieve them. This is specifically to prevent people from gaming the system. But other badges are public so it's plain to see what needs to be done to get them. This is because the work needed to earn a badge is essentially useful. (Unless people are messing around, which we generally catch, or it will be flagged.)

We like to have age-tags on posts and I've just added some on a few active topics that didn't have them. I wish there was a way to edit tags without bumping the questions to the top of the page.

@balancedmama I don't think its off-topic, but it is a dup: parenting.stackexchange.com/questions/8408/…

"List questions" are tricky.

I generally only worry about them if it seems likely that there will be a lot of equally valid answers. In the case of digital baby names, I'm not sure there would be that many.

Generally, the more specific the question, the less likely it is to be a "list". Asking for comprehensive, programmatically-accessible database is fairly specific.

Something like "what's your favorite brand of car seat", on the other hand, is far too general.

@balancedmama We recently had a user go through and make about a dozen edits here, even though they haven't asked or answered any questions on our site. The reason he made the edits was... hats for the Hat Bash celebration. He actually made dozens of edits across a slew of SE sites, just so he could have a bunch of new hats.

I'm totally okay with this.

Partially because the edits are peer-reviewed, and I trust the system to work (more often than not, at least).

Partially because this user is also a moderator on EL&U SE with over 50k rep there, so I trust his judgement of grammar and spelling :P

I don't see badges (or the small amounts of reputation you can gain from edits) any differently: what is important is the quality of the edits; not the motivation people have for making them.

@Beofett I agree with you here. When people do a bunch of too-minor or too-major edits while going for the badge, they just end up temporarily banned from suggesting edits, which is antithetical to their goal of getting the badge. The checks and balances are set up so any abuses are temporary.

@Beofett Is it possible to change the close reason to point to the dup instead?

@KarlBielefeldt Yeah, we can use mod magic to re-open, then re-close :)

done

@KarlBielefeldt That is interesting, I was not aware there was any consequence for "over-editing" and being too minor without moderator involvement.

@Beofett Thanks for that Beofett. Was first on my list until I read you'd already done it.

In regard to the editing issue, I'm not really partial one way or the other - in my opinion, over-all things work pretty well, based on my experience, I am just trying to do due dilligence and I will say I agree that it can be a little "weird" when a whole bunch of edits of old posts start showing up at the same time. If the posts are better for it, so be it, but I can at least see that side of what monsto was saying.

@balancedmama To be honest, I don't know how automatic it is. I don't know if rejected edits auto-ban, or just create a flag for mods to deal with.

Either way, if monsto is over it and there isn't further evidence of anyone else being too upset by it, I don't want to worry about it. Knowing even that at least a flag is automatically raised, is enough to know there is a check against it and that is enough for me anyway.

@balancedmama Yeah, I had a hard time getting used to that as well. SE sites have a weird non-linear relationship with time. Half my reputation points on programmers and stackoverflow are from answers I wrote a long time ago.

Oh, I have no problem with the non-linear aspect, it is when a whole bunch of otherwise non-related questions pop up because they've been edited that it gets weird. If it is five or six questions that all relate to one another in some other way and the person looking at that topic just happened to notice some useful improvements along the way - I get it. And, like I said, if it helps the questions or answers be clearer or more searchable then, awesome.

Occasionally I have had to reject edits though for a change in meaning I perceive, but that is exactly it, that check is there to prevent those edits getting through. When they do get through, there is a further check in the ability of the OP to roll it back, or otherwise change things for over-all improvement without loss of meaning.

In reality even if we all agreed with monsto's concern (and arbitrary numbers) could we really change anything anyway? I see Queen Mab hath been with us.

Sorry, we are actually in Romeo and Juliette and all of this "talk of wind is blowing us from ourselves" :-) so I couldn't help it.

:13066466

I always forget to hit the little dwon carrot that connects my response to the original comment to which I am responding!

@balancedmama You now have mod power.... you can edit your chat posts! :)

Can't everyone edit, just within a limited time period?

Honestly, I'm not certain.

I thought the same as Karl on that one. But I haven't been able to uparrow to it for a couple of days the way I used to. Course, I just did, so whatever the glitch is now fixed? or maybe my keys are getting sticky - they have felt a little bit that way.

@Beofett Time to clean the keyboard.

Good morning to both of you btw.

Good morning/Afternoon :)

@Beofett Yeah, it's ten o'clock here and I'm taking a break from lessons with daughter while hubby dubby does a math lesson with her this morning. I guess its just after lunch for you.

@KarlBielefeldt Without pressuring you to give up info about your location, morning or afternoon?

@balancedmama It's still morning here, but afternoon starts in two minutes.

Well, perhaps, good morning, and in case I don't chat with you, good afternoon, goodevening and good night is in order :-)

and I'll extend that to you to @RoryAlsop

Do you guys know if there's a keyboard shortcut for "reply to this message"? Clicking the actions arrow then reply seems a little cumbersome.

Not that I'm aware of... it would certainly be nice, though.

@balancedmama Happy diurnal isomorphism, as we have taken to saying over on Sec.SE

Works for me. :-)

@KarlBielefeldt Doesn't one of the greasmonkey scripts have that sort of thing? Lemme find the link...

@RoryAlsop Thanks. Not that I'll remember most of it right at first. I'll have to actually register with overflow I think so I can favorite it.

See, I did it again :-) Then, I am distracted with previewing a TNG episode lightly based on Romeo and Juliette.

Might have Alice try to figure out which characters are representing which.

@RoryAlsop Looks useful, thanks. Now I just need one that lets me edit using vi commands :-)

@KarlBielefeldt Mods can edit all of their recent messages, all the way up, either indefinitely or at least for as long as the chat is open. Normal users (so I'm currently learning!!) can only edit their last few messages, and each one has a time-out of maybe two minutes. After that, it's locked. Yep, even for 20k rep users :-)

@RoryAlsop I have to say, I love the humor here, "Legends tell of a prolific Meta Stack Overflow chatter who despised using their mouse above all things." constantly running into stuff like this just makes the day a little nicer. Stop being so damn helpful Rory!!

@balancedmama :-) excellent

@TorbenGundtofte-Bruun How long were you a moderator?

@balancedmama Oh, for around 1012 days or so :-P Basically I was one of the first, starting with the private beta. That's 2 years and 9 months ago, according to Area 51.

I love that your answer is about 1012 days. How many minutes?

9334665831 seconds. Better?

Here I am expecting units in years - maybe months. lol

(Honestly, that was just a random string of digits!)

Metric years, or imperial? ;-P

I know, you could calculate it.

Imperial ;-)

Is everyone on SE a big Science Fiction Geek?

Then it's probably around two and nine-thirteenth years

@balancedmama Only those that are also tech geeks -- which is why most of us know SE in the first place, right?

Besides the example of Will Wheaton's blog just being charming and endearing, there is another reason people here are big followers. My husband wouldn't have a clue who he is.

You're not a true TNG fangurl either -- true nerds know his name is Wil, with just one L.

Not me, I found it through parenting, but happen to also be sci-fi geeky (in books, not a lot of movies and TV though) and am anything but techie.

What are metric years? 10 hours per day, 10 days per week, 10 weeks per month, 10 months per year?

@KarlBielefeldt HA! I was just waiting for that to show up so I could star it! Thanks!!

Actually, I grew up watching TNG with my Dad. It was my favorite night of the week, but I've never been good with names or spelling for that matter.

Like I said though, I identify as a sci-fi geek, but like books better.

I'm not a big scifi geek either. I enjoy TNG but I haven't actually watched much in the past (how old is my firstborn?) four years or so.

I can't get hyped about all those tv series that my coworkers are going on and on about. Breaking Bad, Lost, How I Met Your Mother, bla bla bla - I don't get how they have time to watch all that stuff.

So I read most of Frank Herbert's books, Aldous Huxley, Ursula K. LeGuin. . .

I love hard science fiction, such as Arthur C. Clarke writes it, and similar. He wrote one about a space elevator, and private companies are actually trying to build one now. It's mindblowing.

Yeah, we turned our cable off when we had Alice - it has been really nice actually - except missing baseball and football play-offs.

We are roku-only at home now.

I don't think I've actually read Arthur S. C.arke, but I know of him - I agree it is incredible.

I read a pretty good space elevator book recently:

amzn.com/0345537122

@KarlBielefeldt We just added the Roku. It helps to access a lot of the streaming documentaries and things I like to be able to use for Alice's lessons and my husband and I have really enjoyed White Collar and How I met your mother.

The one thing we don't yet have since we moved last summer is a TV signal. No sat, no DVB, no Netflic (doesn't exist over here), no nothing. It's cold turkey. We haven't missed it for months but now after 7 months we are feeling it.

@TorbenGundtofte-Bruun It is nice to watch through netflix because you don't have commercials and you can watch on your own time. If you have a little extra time one evening, you can watch three episodes and then go two weeks before the next.

Yeah, streaming media hasn't made it here yet. Austria is digital backwater, except for cell phone contracts - those are dirt cheap for some reason.

We also LOVE the new Sherlock. Besides, how can you beat watching something with actors like Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman.

@balancedmama yep

@balancedmama not even sure I know those people. And definitely not the series. I fell off the media train half a decade ago :-/

@TorbenGundtofte-Bruun Well, I my husband is realtor if you wanted to find a new piece of property and build a whole brand-new house here lol

I'm currently sitting in my home office - in front of me: 16 guitars and a computer or three. Behind me...about 4000 sci-fi and fantasy novels

Many of them pulps from the earliest US sci-fi days

Netflix is wonderful... We have cable (adding TV to our landline phone and high-speed internet was pretty much free... for the duration of the package deal), but only ever watch digital downloads, netflix, or DVDs converted to h.264 format over our WD TV unit (no Roku here)

@balancedmama Depends where "here" is. I used to live/love America, I've got friends in Oregon, used to visit Seattle bi-yearly and love that corner of the country. Frankly it's gone insane and is turning into a police state. I am not going there for any reason until that "security theater" (as they so aptly call it) is dialed back a couple of notches.

@RoryAlsop I am more truly a fantasy fic fan, but as the two genres cross-over quite a bit I've enjoyed my fair share of sci-fi novels too. Of course I've read things like Farenheit 451, and even micahel Chrichton's novels can often fall into the category, One I think is an often over-looked classic is called Devil on my Back - I read it in MiddleSchool, but I definitely can't claim a collection of 4000

Hunter has a tremendous variety of dinosaur shows of varying levels of sophistication

@TorbenGundtofte-Bruun You'd think things on the internet would be pretty much global. What, do they just refuse to stream to those IP blocks? I know, spoiled American here.

@balancedmama I cheated - at one point I inherited the entire sci-fi collection from Port Stanley library...

@TorbenGundtofte-Bruun Oh, I wouldn't actually wish "here" on my worst enemy. I live in LosAngeles County.

@RoryAlsop I backed the "Save the Sci-fi" kickstarter, so I've got a fair amount of old pulp titles I could be reading, but haven't had time to really get started

But I can't even claim the weather advantages of Lala land, because we're up in the high desert part of it.

@KarlBielefeldt yeah, all streaming services say the same: "Not available in your location." Same for Pandora, even for a remarkable amount of content on YouTube. Non-USA is second-class Internet, friends.

@TorbenGundtofte-Bruun Most of the year it is well above 90 degrees F and during the summer months often hovers around 110 degrees. Then, in December Hell freezes over for a month and things are icy and windy,, but rarely do we get snow.

What frustrates me most about Austria is that everything is Germanized. Everything. Even discovery channel, even sesame street. It's not possible for me to watch native-language content unless I plainly steal it (pirate downloads, or faking my IP for streaming).

@balancedmama -15 degrees C here :(

I live here purely because of love of a man and no more - If I could get him to move back to the Seattle area I would leave everything except my daughter behind to do it - I'd live in a cardboard box for awhile if that would do the trick.

@TorbenGundtofte-Bruun Really? That truly surprises me, it isn't as if it is an oppressive government that is trying to control what you watch or something.

@balancedmama yeah, the things love does to a person. That's also why I'm in Austria. But apart from the anglophobia and their damn corrupt politics, it's mostly good.

@Beofett Yeah. That's cold - I remember temps like that when I was at school back east - least pleasant memory, snot freezing right inside my nose. Never want that again, but honestly, I'd prefer that to 110F. At some point you run out of clothes to take off.

You can however, always add.

gotta go - my turn to convince No.1 to sleep.

@TorbenGundtofte-Bruun 'nite!

Gut nacht!

@balancedmama Can does not always mean will... I'm too stubborn :P

Schools were actually closed around here yesterday, even though we had 0 precipitation. Just really, really cold.

So true.

Still, I wilt here.

Down in the regular part of La La land, you'll see men tanned like leather walking around in sky blue panties and matching bras. We had an Actor who played robots as our govorner (and were happy about it), we had government freezes over budgets years before the feds decided to jump on the same bandwagon. Driving on the freeway alternates between being like playing Frogger and sitting in the line to Hell, AND I'm not even near the beach with its cool ocean breezes and coinciding weather.

OH! and we have one of the highest costs of living in the country. I mean really who said SoCal was paradise? certainly not a sane person.

@Beofett At least in the city you can laugh at all those who are crazier than you (the panties thing). Here, I start thinking I'm the crzy one.

@balancedmama We also beat the feds on the budget freeze. Our current governor has (last I checked) less than 10% approval rating.

@Beofett Alright - my turn for school again. Chat with you later.

@balancedmama later :)

lol, well fine, we are in equally horrid place to live :-)

and at least the panties and bra matched!