New policy on CW-fication

Conversation started May 14, 2014 at 16:14.

Martin Sleziak

May 14, 2014 16:14

We have several post on meta about turning posts into CW by sufficient number of edits, for example here or here. (The later is a feature-request which is tagged as status-completed, to make things even more confusing.)

Not so long ago it was announced that posts will be no longer automatically turn into CW.

Should we now somehow correct the old answers? (By posting a new answer about change in the policy, or making a comment asking the answerer to update their answer.) Or should we simply let it be, it will come up on meta eventually?

user116900

@MartinSleziak Wow that is new to me.

user116900

@MartinSleziak I think you should post a new answer.

Martin Sleziak

The thing I am concerned about is that there are probably several threads on meta that are related to this. I am not sure whether bumping all of them is a good idea.

(But of course, I might have overestimated the number of posts where this information is relevant.)

user116900

@MartinSleziak I think it's fine. If people scold you for bumping, just ignore them...

Gabriel R.

@JasperLoy What is Community Wiki?

user116900

May 14, 2014 16:17

@MartinSleziak You can quote me in your defence, lol.

user116900

@GabrielR. Means anyone with a certain rep can edit your post, and you no longer get points on your post even with new votes.

Martin Sleziak

Here is another post on the same topic.

user116900

One thing you can do is to find them all, and then edit at one shot so that people know you are doing serial editing.

user116900

In this case, bumping is also good to draw people's attention to it. For example, I did not know about the change in policy!

user116900

@N3buchadnezzar Also never visited, lol.

Martin Sleziak

May 14, 2014 16:25

I have posted one answer and made comments on some answers, that they should be updated. Maybe they are not so many questions about this, as I originally thought.

user116900

OK, thanks for your work.

robjohn

@MartinSleziak Not a good idea: that would cause them to all to come to the top of the list. That was one purpose of the auto-CW conversion: prevent constant edits from pushing the question to the top of the heap. Now, the mods get flagged and then we have to decide whether it is someone gaming the system instead of it being automatically done.

@MartinSleziak So, a lot of the posts might still be CW. When a post was marked CW before, the mods had to be flagged by the OP to fix it.

user116900

@robjohn Anyway, this is meta, so nobody gets more rep from the bumping.

robjohn

@JasperLoy Isn't the auto-CW conversion also removed from main posts?

user116900

@robjohn Yes, but that is not my point. =)

Martin Sleziak

May 14, 2014 16:36

@robjohn I think you might have misunderstood me. I was not talking about all posts that are CW. I was just saying that it might be useful to update information about CW-fication posts by SE software.

robjohn

@JasperLoy was I replying to your comments?

user116900

@robjohn Oh, OK then =)

Martin Sleziak

Or maybe I have misunderstood you.

So you're saying that the new policy is bad idea? Or that my suggestion to update meta is bad idea?

robjohn

@MartinSleziak like which posts?

Martin Sleziak

Like the two posts I've bumped a while ago on meta.

N3buchadnezzar

May 14, 2014 16:38

@robjohn Hey

robjohn

@MartinSleziak If removing CW moves the posts on the front page, I don't think it is worth it. However, I am not sure that it does.

Martin Sleziak

@robjohn I have never mentioned removing CW from posts.

For example here on our meta an answer says, that a post is turned CW after 10 edits. This is no longer true. So I think it is reasonable to update that answer.

robjohn

@MartinSleziak Ah, I see. You want to change the FAQ-like posts that talk about CW... yes, that should be done.

@JasperLoy It was not Martin's point either, :-)

user116900

@robjohn You need more coffee!

Martin Sleziak

The reason I brought it up here was that the same thing might be mentioned in many posts on meta. (I am not sure how many.) So if this meant that we have to bump say 20 posts and each of them just add this new information, that would be not ideal.

user116900

May 14, 2014 16:42

@MartinSleziak But if you left a comment for others to edit, won't that also bump them?

robjohn

@MartinSleziak I would think that this list would contain most of the posts that might need editing, and from a quick sampling, not many do.

Martin Sleziak

@JasperLoy Yes, if someone edits their post, it causes a bump. But I did not feel like changing someone's answer substantially. That's why I chose to comment and not to edit.