An answer I'd asked about on here earlier's still been getting tons of comments from various users, ranging from questions about etymology to anecdotes about personal experiences with clocks and language to disagreement with word choice.

I guess that I get some of it; discussing etymology and personal experiences can be fun, if not the typical intent of comments on SE. But, I guess I'm still kinda confused about some of the other comments debating writing style.

@snailplane It's kinda funny (in a very lucky way!) to join the chat to bring up an issue with users insisting that a writing style is wrong, only to see that the room was just discussing how stylistic differences aren't mistakes. Completely share that sentiment - I'm trying to figure out how to express that without it seeming like an attack.

@Nat I think that your comment about why you rolled back the edit was good. I would love to see more users handle content disputes that way instead of getting angry. 96.2% of everything that goes on here is intended to be helpful, so civil communication should solve most issues.

@ColleenV Thanks, and completely agree. The user had rolled back my rollback to their prior revision, so I'll invite 'em to this room to see if we can have a dialog.

@Nat I hope that you won't confuse my support of the way you handled the edit as supporting your rollback of the edits. I suspect that @J.R. was trying to save you some down-votes by removing something that was controversial but unrelated to the question at hand. Style is a valid reason for the community to edit a post, especially on ELL where we would like answers to show good, solid (if pedestrian) standard English.

I know we get attached to what we've written, and on SO writing style is not quite as important as here (although maybe coding style would be...)

but when we write we have to be very conscious of the various fluency levels of our community, and that as a native speaker some learners will hold your writing up as the "gold standard"

I tend to use a lot of idiom in my normal speech and I have to really go back and double check that some crazy unintelligible figure of speech has slipped in while I'm trying to make my point. It makes it difficult for less fluent readers to benefit from my answer and it distracts from my point.

@Nat If a moderator rolls back your edit, you should have a conversation before rolling it back a second time. Otherwise it is likely that we will lock your post.

@ColleenV I'd hope that a mod intending to improve a post would be willing to discuss their edits, so I've asked them to chat about it here. That said, I've been thinking of this as a non-moderation issue. As a mod myself elsewhere on the interwebs, I tend to see mods as ordinary users with additional responsibilities to be called upon only when necessary (which is basically how "A Theory of Moderation" describes it).

I suppose what's a bit odd for me is that it's difficult to see where this user's coming from, or why their feelings on that exact term are so strong. They'd linked style guides discussing how many feel that the use of the contraction is inappropriate in formal writing, which I completely agree with; in general, formal writing guidelines do contraindicate contractions.

Actually, to clarify the above:

> Even with active community self-regulation, moderators occasionally need to intervene. Moderators are human exception handlers, there to deal with those (hopefully rare) exceptional conditions that should not normally happen, but when they do, they can bring your entire community to a screaming halt — if you don’t have human exception handling in place.

So, that's basically why I've been seeing this as a user/user interaction rather than a user/mod interaction.

I figure that this exact same thing could occur with any 2k+ rep user (or, indirectly, via suggested edits from low-rep users).

@Nat That's fine. After the first set of rollbacks, even if this were just a regular user, you would not rollback again. Posts where that happens get locked for content disputes

We all sometimes make mistakes, so I'm not taking a side here - I'm just giving you some process guidance

@ColleenV Yeah, the mod thing does create a bit of a conflict-of-interest. Had this been a non-mod user, I'd likely have flagged this for mod intervention, as asking users to not repeatedly apply destructive edits would qualify as one of those things a mod should do.

@Nat You should flag it - the mod team here is very good about asking for other mods to step in when there may be a perceived conflict of interest

@ColleenV Fully appreciate that. I'd like to avoid sides entirely; I prefer talking stuff out and mutually understanding. I wouldn't want there to be hard feelings.

I don't think you should worry about hard feelings as long as you're acting in good faith.

And if we give feedback, it is intended to be helpful and constructive. It's hard sometimes in text to get the exact tone across, so we try to cut everyone some slack.

That's good to know. Assuming good faith is really one of StackExchange's better policies. I guess that I got a bit skeptical when a user applied an edit they knew to be unwanted, then put it back in after a rollback without discussing it. (Not something that needs to be addressed; just, that's how it was coming off on my end.)

Anywho, thanks for the insight! It looks like there isn't a problem anymore, and I did appreciate the perspective on how the bit about assuming digital clocks so completely could strike readers as jarring.

I haven't managed to find a better data source for that yet, though it did occur to me that other variations in language could be explained as a consequence of precision and accuracy issues in older clocks. It's almost weird to consider how little things like how our computers auto-update the time from an atomic clock across the internet can change how we relay that time to others in casual discussion.

Huh, so they edited in their revision then locked the post. That's definitely not what mods are supposed to do on StackExchange.

So, what now? Post about it on Meta or something?

Yes. Generally. I'm not sure why TL;dr is an issue.

@Nat You can take it up on Meta, but frankly I think you should consider what someone who has been on ELL since its inception is trying to show you. The issue is 'til. This isn't a style problem - this was something that was generating a lot of back and forth in comments and the mod team is well within our purview to try to put an end to it.

ELL is a bit different from a lot of SE sites, because the folks asking questions here are asking in the language that they have questions about. What if you were just learning a scripting language like Python and had to ask all of your questions about it by actually writing Python?

@ColleenV Unfortunately all they did tell me was that it was a style problem, linking style guides. They've ignored all clarification requests.

@Nat J.R. wasn't the only user who was telling you 'til was a bad choice

It's just that he was trying harder to explain to you why it was a bad choice

@ColleenV Yes, for style reasons. He actually linked me the same style guide that I'd provided in an earlier comment.

Please, don't get me wrong - I think that there's an argument for not using "'til". The issue here is that it was locked in through an explicitly declined edit, as opposed to the suggestion itself. Ditto for "tl;dr".

@ColleenV I appreciate that, though it's really not all that different from other SE's. For example, posts on SE.Physics can be complicated by alternative or controversial theories, through it's held there that such content should be down-voted when disagreed with rather than reworked through moderation powers.

What I mean is, this isn't an uncommon situation or unique to this forum; this sort of misunderstanding is fairly common.

I do hope that the revisions I'd put into the answer demonstrated that I was entirely open to suggestions, many of which I took.

@Nat Your interpretation of the misunderstanding is incorrect. You should post on meta so we can get it sorted.

@ColleenV O

Hah opps - on mobile.

I'm on medication right now that maybe prevents me from doing good 'splaining :) and I don't want to put words in J.R.'s mouth

@ColleenV Definitely, though could you clarify the topic a bit here?

... As a note, the only part of the entire thing that I disagree with, is the removal of the TL;DR... you shouldn't need to have an appendix at the end of your answer so that users can understand what you're saying.

You have an issue with the way something was edited - that's a discussion for the community

The post was locked because there is a content dispute - once the dispute is resolved, the lock can get lifted

@Catija Definitely agree that an appendix shouldn't be necessary; is that how it came across? I thought that I was adding additional information about writing styles. For example, when I discussed that the use of "really" was informal, I didn't think anyone needed that to understand the post. Likewise, I thought that the post was already entirely comprehensible.

I mean, if the post was really hard-to-read, that'd make more sense. I thought the sole objection was on the use of the two informal terms.

@Catija Gotcha. In that case I guess the "Notes" section can be removed.

I mean, the contested edit that @J.R. was making was the removal of "tl;dr" and "'til", which I thought was their stylistic preference. If those terms were confusing people, I'd understand that.

My experience with Stack Exchange is that we're focused on questions and answers. Anything that's "extra" we don't really want. That's why we prohibit salutations and signatures from posts. We want the answers people write to be clear, free of fluff and helpful. On a site like this, where many of the users aren't native English speakers, that carries over to being conscientious of doing your best to use clear, full written English, free from unnecessary colloquialisms that may confuse.

If the question is about said colloquialism, that's one thing... or if it's about a similar one and you're referencing it, that's also fine, but generally it's good practice to avoid them.

So I guess "tl;dr" and "'til" are confusing terms that should be avoided for the benefit of English learners?

Whatever the case, I certainly didn't mean to confuse anyone. I thought that these were common, well-understood terms that facilitated the ease and pleasantness of the post.

Well, whatever the case, I suppose that my core concern was that a user was forcing their stylistic preferences through misusing their mod powers. The SE ecosystem was specified to operate more freely rather than through micro-managing word choice, as was explicitly laid out in "A Theory of Moderation": "But what do community moderators do? The short answer is, as little as possible!".

I suspect that there's a larger misunderstanding here that might, in principle, be addressed, such that such inappropriate behavior doesn't occur again in the future. And, to be perfectly honest, the humanist in me wants to see the best outcome in these things, however minor they might be.

But, I guess that we all have lives to attend to and schedules to keep. =P

@snailplane I like your lingust joke.

@Catija Thank you. Well said.