Hmm my bad. I didn't realise they meant the graphical shell but I guess that's super obvious. Thank you for explaining...

This answer seems bad and the other answer should really be deleted imho... I don't know what to do here

should we upvote the answer?

No

but leave it there, it's still an answer solving the problem

LOL why are you taking a question that is 2 years, 4 months ago?

@Cynplytholowazy then we should upvote it. The question is not "answered" according to the system

@Cynplytholowazy that's what I use this room for

that's what this room was unfrozen by a mod for, actually

in short though, I'm giving attention to old questions because visitors see them. When you search for something with a search engine and get a result on Ask Ubuntu, the age of the page is of little import. In fact, you're more likely to be served an older question, because it probably has more views

@EliahKagan okay voted as dupe

thanks @edwinksl :)

@EliahKagan Edits askubuntu.com/review/suggested-edits/757506 askubuntu.com/review/suggested-edits/757508

@Cynplytholowazy I added some tags there.

Ok I didn't realize

editing is a community project :) we can always improve further

title was bad too. I tried to improve it

askubuntu.com/posts/958307/revisions

I agree.

How did this edit (don't worry, not one of yours) get an Approve review? It just adds wrong formatting.

No idea.

This formatting is bad.

@Zanna We can close the question, which is both a duplicate and off-topic. Normally I'd flag the CHMOD/chmod answer NAA on the grounds that it's answering a different question, but it's not clear to me that there really is any revision of this question that ought to be considered the "real" one. I downvoted both answers and would cast a delete vote on the (ironically far less harmful) CHMOD one if the post score allowed it and/or and delete from review, but I wouldn't flag either.

I'm usually not reluctant to cast an NAA or VLQ flag on anything I would vote to delete, but here the whole situation is so confused. I think the main thing to do there is close the question. The OP's ability to try the accepted wrong answer relates to Debian, in that an Ubuntu user who had the ability to log in as root would likely mention that in their question, but it's one of two explicit options when you install Debian. I wish the part about Debian hadn't been edited out of the question.

Here's another wrong formatting edit suggestion that got an Approve review.

@EliahKagan reject+edit-ed to use <kbd> instead of code formatting for keyboard shortcuts

@EliahKagan added my downvote to George's answer which is really NAA but was at least wrong from the beginning (if he'd checked the permissions more carefully)

I guess I should've done that!

Haha nice comment from the OP:

lol

(I downvoted the accepted answer to the chmod question earlier but hoped George would delete his after the clarification so I temporarily refrained - there's a nice badge for deleting a +3 score answer haha)

he just deleted it

OT Mint.

@Zanna They've confirmed my suspicions, but I'm not sure if they'll end up deciding to add the necessary information to their question to justify migration. Right now I don't think we should foist the question on another site; users there would have to infer what is going on from the question and from comments in multiple places.

I agree, the question is unclear as written and digging around in comments on one of the answers is a bit much to ask.

How was this edit approved?!

thanks for fixing it

seems a dupe

Yes.

All but a few of these should have been rejected. That user has made only 11 edit suggestions and their actions are therefore not a significant part of the problem of bad edits. I am worried about how these are getting accepted, though.

Should this post be made into an answer?

I think it is one kind of, since the question is "can I do this without using a live cd?" answer: "no"

Do you want to edit it to expand it?

I voted to close as a duplicate, so I don't think it's really necessary to do that. I know how to do that, but it's well covered elsewhere... Do you think it should be deleted? Does it behoove us to expand it properly?

or do you mean expand it to explain why it can't be done?

Yes, though it wouldn't require a detailed explanation. I think as long as the question exists at all that it is better for that answer to exist and be expanded than either to not exist or to exist as it is now. That doesn't mean you have to do it though. If you don't, maybe I'll do it. :)

@Zanna Well, it could probably be done without a live environment because the system probably works fine in single-user mode. But it probably can't be done without physical access--live environment, rescue mode, etc.--short of finding and using a security vulnerability, which is unlikely to be a good time investment for the OP.

(unrelated) I think this question is unclear, though maybe they want to know how to install a build of phpmyadmin with those options passed to ./configure.

I don't think I understand their situation well enough to make it into a really good answer. hmm

back later...

k

Dupe. (Theoretically unclear, but probably better to dupe it.)

This should not have been closed as off-topic. But I suggest waiting to cast a reopen vote until the OP edits with more information (if they do), since if they don't edit it then it's a duplicate anyway and I think having the edit and the reopen votes come in all together will make it easier for reopen queue reviewers to know what's going on.

Also I'm not sure the OP's edit will even put a question in the queue if it's been there before. How does that work, exactly?

@Zanna I gave it a Looks OK review for now. Maybe I'll edit it later.

has it been in the reopen queue before?

@EliahKagan been wondering about that...

hmm that's my fault, anyway

@Zanna Amidst discussing the xbox controller question, I think I totally missed this message of yours:

Is that in reference to How to identify the process that's sending error messages to terminal?

We can make their other question a duplicate.

@EliahKagan yes it was :)

@EliahKagan can it be retagged at all... is it in any reasonable sense a command-line question?

@EliahKagan I was going through them too and I was sure I remembered reviewing at least one or two of that person's edits but couldn't find myself... I guess some must have been deleted. Thank you for fixing those posts

I voted to reopen this as it's duped incorrectly imho looks like reviewers are agreeing so far

maybe that one is no-repro then...

@Zanna Yeah I guess so. I've VTC'd.

@Zanna Yes, I would keep the command-line tag there. I've posted an answer.

I mean on one you want to dupe

I think it would be reasonable to add it, but if you add it, I can use my hammer

Oh. Let me take a look.

that's a wonderful answer :)

thanks for adding it

Okay that seems reasonable. I've edited it, and adding command-line is one of the changes.

thanks :)

closed the other one. Back in a bit

The other answer has the core insight that you usually only see stuff in your terminal that was run from your terminal. I plan to upvote that--and the question--when I get more votes.

I think How to be superuser? could be made a duplicate of any of a few questions.

Any suggestions in addition to what you've voted for?

I can look for some stuff, but unclear or too broad might also be correct. It's not clear if they just want to move files to that one location or if they want to run as root all the time or what.

I am perhaps biased toward closing this as quickly as possible by the quality of the answers so far. One answer suggests to try to run the whole GUI as root. And I think the other answer doesn't actually warrant a rude/abusive flag, but it's pretty personal, and I'm not sure its factual content is even true.

(Does Ubuntu really disable root logins because of novices underestimating their own ignorance? Is that actually the reason? I might know, if the answer were lighter on personal disparagement and heavier on being an answer.)

closing as quickly as possible is my priority there too...

I just voted too broad

> people who don't know what they're doing (like you) have no idea just how ignorant they are

that's... rude

@EliahKagan I assumed it was just their decision on how to discourage people from running as root all the time instead of just suing when needed

like that Debian user who ran recursive chmod on / as root by mistake

So does anything need to be done with that answer?

sigh I don't know

I'm surprised it got an upvote. The claim about how messing up a VM "involves" reinstalling the OS is pretty obviously wrong. Guest machines can be snapshotted and copied. Should I comment? If the solution is for the post to be deleted, I don't want to get in an argument with the author in comments first, because if I did and I were involved in deleting or editing the post then it would create the quite understandable appearance that I was using my rep-based powers for rhetorical purposes.

Also if I was mistaken not to flag it and it should actually be considered rude/abusive then engaging with the author in comments instead is probably a flat-out misuse of the system.

@Zanna I see what you mean. The context doesn't really make it better either.

@Seth This isn't a flag or a request for any specific action to be taken, but do you have any thoughts about what should happen with answers like that one? It seems like part of what it's trying to do is to answer the question, but at the same time I feel like any edit that would make it not a personal attack would constitute a radical change. Should I be flagging this sort of thing as rude or abusive? Aggressively editing?

the recursive chmod on Debian question is still open :(

Now the "How to be superuser?" question has a third answer, which is also wrong (just enabling the root account does not usually make it possible to log in through the display manager, which is presumably what the author means by "login from the UI as root"), though it does not have the serious flaws of either of the other answers.

I am wishing I could delete the whole question and send the asker an email saying "here's how to move that file, and please have a look at this question, this question and this question"

good thing I am not able to do such things :)

Yeah. Who uses email? :)

lol

bodhi.zazen wrote an answer to the "how to be superuser" question which I upvoted. The nasty answer now has 3 upvotes

going to bed

Good night!

:) thanks

I downvoted the answer although I still don't know what I should be doing