@andselisk it's good you bring this up because it's related to editing "philosophy". There are some important points here: (1) you seem to have very strong opinions regarding typesetting - the contrast between fonts or the appearance of fonts in text. (2) Like Safdar, you appear to be in favor of subbing mathjax and mhchem wherever possible.

Another important point is willingness to delete content. I don't know how willing you are but I sense that you are less liable to double guess before deleting.

That last point is not so important because deletion should operate in tandem with a second user.

I understand that hwk is a useful handle to go through old posts potentially requiring edits. My approach: (1) I do not add mathjax during editing just because I can. I might leave for instance "10 mL" or even "10 degrees C" in place within a paragraph, particularly if there is a lone occurrence and no mathjax in the same paragraph. I aim for similar usage however. If I switch to mathjax in one place I usually do it through the entire post.

(2) I almost always switch to mathjax in equations. Since mathjax is not perfectly flexible and slower to load, however, I might allow mixed formatting where it appears not to impede legibility/clarity, and may (imo) even enhance it. I will allow numbers and units ("mg/L") and certain symbols ("=") in the text for instance. I see no harm there.

(3) Regarding grammar, english: I often aim to improve this. Sometimes the OPs quirks in language usage (eg ordering of verbs and nouns, dropped articles) are missed during a fast reading, sometimes they do no harm and I ignore them. I aim for clarity and think I do a pretty good job. I also reformat text blocks for ease of reading if I see it as necessary.

(4) Titles: sometimes I overlook titles, if they make sense. I usually try to leave the title alone if the view count is high. I also aim to make light edits in such a case. If the view count is low I reflexibly review the title. I have started to follow Martin's suggestion of trying to ensure that the title is written in the form of a question ("Trebek" format).

(5) Tags: tags can be edited without changing the body of the post. Sometime this is enough. I am not as familiar with tag usage and philosophy as you so I defer here.

@BuckThorn I just don't like posts where OP is unable to string a sentence together. And I don't convert everything to MJ. If the post doesn't need MJ, there should be none. "NaCl", "α-C", "25 °C" or "g/mol" are fine without MJ. But indeed, if you do need it, use MJ everywhere for the uniform appearance.

Tags are still a bit of a hit-or-miss to me. I don't like five tags limit and some tags' usage. I used to stick with a different tagging system I developed for myself using Zotero where I would stick with "microtags" and less verbosity in tag names.

(6) In addition to the appearance (formatting), grammar (english usage), which impact legibility, other concerns include: (a) are questions trivial or poor (although the vote count should reflect this); (b) are there non-trivial answers (for instance, not simply "uarite"); (c) does the answer actually address the question; (d) is the answer complete (not a "hint"). (e) is the question original or duplicated. (f) and finally: how will deletion impact users who created the posts?

These are the typical criteria used to establish whether deletion is appropriate. I have difficulty sometimes prioritizing them, partly because site philosophy evolves. Ideally we would not be deleting posts years later. After all, deletion assumes an oversight by the original community. Are we better than they were then? This is at least one reason why I generally favor non-deletion, particularly if a post has had lots of views.

@BuckThorn I don't think andselisk is commenting about anything you did. As far as I can tell, you are both agreeing with each other. I think it's just a one-off last night when Todd was removing the homework tag from about 20 questions at a go (but not editing beyond that).

@BuckThorn Please don't use \ce{…} for orbitals. See On formatting electron configurations. And yes, I ortho is correct, I was referring to the Todd's editing spree.

@andselisk @orthocresol I was a little more verbose than necessary on purpose. It's good to compare notes. Serves potentially as reference, you might catch something you disagree with, it helps you to understand how I think and how far I may operate from the recommended conventions, and guide me if necessary.

@andselisk regarding the electron config convention, I am confused. Martin answers in that post that he uses "\ce{...}" ...

But I think I understand... so use "\mathrm{...}" instead?

That linked meta post definitely needs to be simplified...

Might want to refer to this instead: chemistry.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/443/…

@BuckThorn Martin says "The use of \ce{...} as a workaround is wrong. In this case you are using a command, that is not designed for this usage." And this is exactly correct.

@andselisk at the top of that answer it says "I personally have adopted this style, too, basically because it gives quite neat results already, and is very easy to type. " referring to the "\ce" format. It is under "Original answer circa 05/2015:..." that the answer states "The use of \ce{...} as a workaround is wrong...."

@BuckThorn Sigh… I guess we need Martin to explain this again. In the meantime, you can check the documentation for the "big-boy" mhchem (PDF). You won't find anything regarding orbital symbols or hybridization. Also, using common sense it's clear that semantics is broken if you use wrong macro for the job.

@andselisk No, I understand. And from Martin's answer I see why mathrm is preferable. But the whole answer is clearly a little convoluted (might be worth editing). Also, the use of mathrm ignores common preference (chemistry.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3576/…) Although, leading by example, mods should choose the best - not most convenient - option. Using mathrm is not that much more work - now I know....

@andselisk I admit to putting little weight on semantics of markup. Perhaps this confuses search engines? Imho other than that issue what you can't see can't hurt you (until the day rendering breaks down for unforeseen problems with mhchem).

@BuckThorn I remember there was a period a senior user (nickname starts with 'M', ends with 'W') was complaining that \mathrm is too long to type and does look bad on his screen. Took me a while to convince him. Now he just encloses an entire equation in \mathrm{…}…

It might also overlay another layer of interpretation in rendering that slows down loading a tad...

@andselisk hahaha you are a true missionary for the cause...

@BuckThorn This confuses editors:) If you have an idea how and where to use, say, hyphen, minus, en-dash and em-dash, you will be disappointed in humanity each time you see "-" used for all four purposes in the same post.

I think the use of ce for electronic configurations is kind of borderline. What exactly is the status of it? As far as I can tell, it was never officially implemented in mhchem, but happens to work out of the box so people use it anyway?

It seems that semantically the correct way would be something like $[\ce{Ne}]\,(\mathrm{3s})^2$, but that is awful.

@orthocresol I like awful:) Seriously, I'm probably a bit too cautious due to the amount of stuff that got broken when I switched from mhchem to chemformula package in my LaTeX workflow. \mathrm is simple and robust. It likely won't change a bit for another century, whereas macros for chemistry typesetting seem more fragile, complex and are often a subject to change. I'd use them strictly for the documented features only.

Would you consider \mathrm{[Ne] (3s)^2} acceptable?

uh, with spacing

@orthocresol Only if you point a loaded gun to my head:) We have mhchem for element symbols, ang "ugly" for the rest. No need for "ugly" everywhere; yay semantics:)

I can see where you are coming from, but I cannot envision that you will have an easy time convincing people to do that :-)

Also, I never knew about chemformula; I'm having a browse of the documentation now..

@orthocresol I know I have a reputation of pedantic Å-hole, but I honestly don't care about random people's feelings and opinions these days.

I think chemmacros and chemformula rock. Plus, Clemens (author of the packages) is highly active on TeX.SE and helps with the issues quite fast.

@andselisk Yeah, it's just that most people would likely just use \ce{[Ne] 3s2} and won't bother to do otherwise even if instructed so. Then again, we should be used to that sort of thing by now..

Anyway, we should probably update Martin's post about the electronic configs. It's rather ambiguous.

I don't like certain things in modern life I'm forced to believe I should be used to. At least here I have some control over it:)

To me Martin's post was clear enough and honestly I like it as it tells some kind of a story; a struggle to choose the correct macro:)

True, but it should have a conclusion for confused people; and right now the conclusion seems to be "use \ce{...}".

I have no idea what you are talking about! :P

The main problem is: MathJax just isn't latex, it just Borrows the syntax. I've given up on plenty of things regarding implementation... And the mhchem packages have diverged significantly. I mean... That whole pu workaround... There's ugly (in an ugly way) for you. I probably prefer html right now for electronic config

:: (deleted BT) chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/61042/…

Candidate for deletion?

@ToddMinehardt Not the greatest, but it can stay, if the answer is fleshed out.

Ehhhhh... well... I'm on the fence, tbh. Maybe I'll wait for a third opinion.

@ToddMinehardt BTW, if you're deleting or editing or otherwise dealing with a question, you can edit the chat message so that the big box goes away - ctrl-f "::" in this room for examples - that way it's obvious at a glance which ones haven't been dealt with yet ;)

@Martin-マーチン Well, we were mostly arguing about the best way to write electronic configs, that's all :-) And I was of the opinion that we should make some clear recommendations in this meta post, preferably by editing your answer.

@orthocresol - ok, i'll wait and see, and thanks for the ctrl-f tip