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I edited a link to a video out of a question, because the video was not online anymore, so there is no point in having a link there. But my edit got rejected saying:

This edit changes too much in the original post; the original meaning or intent of the post would be lost.

I don't see what a deleted link to a not watchable video is changing that much.

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Yes I left the text before the link hanging, because the text under the link is not the only thing he wanted to say. –  Tim Kathete Stadler Mar 26 '13 at 14:09

2 Answers 2

up vote 13 down vote accepted

The link may be gone, but the edit left the text before it hanging:

I thought I'd share a progress report:

What report?

You should have left a comment instead that the link is dead. The OP may be able to replace the link, or edit the text in such a way the link is no longer needed.

It may or may not be the only thing that the OP wanted to say, but that is hard for the reviewers to discern. Suggested edits should really be used to fix formatting, grammar, spelling and syntax errors only, and perhaps replace dead links with working ones.

For this specific question, there is no real question there. Without the video there is nothing left to answer, it was a non-constructive question to begin with, the accepted answer itself is a link-only answer pointing to a tutorial, another is a recommendation for a different physics engine, etc.

I've voted to close the question instead. It is, in my view, not worth salvaging.

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"Its still really buggy, but collision detection is mostly working, I've started working on some other features (such as bumping the blocks (notice the bug) and interacting with the enemies)." –  Tim Kathete Stadler Mar 26 '13 at 14:09
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Thats also part of the report. –  Tim Kathete Stadler Mar 26 '13 at 14:10
    
That is not clear from the diff; it still better to leave such (radical) changes to the OP. –  Martijn Pieters Mar 26 '13 at 14:15
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A broken link to a video is not of much use to anyone, and authors are notified of edits (so the author could then add the correct link, if one exists). Why wasn't editing out the link with an appropriate edit summary not just as good as commenting, if not better? Please note that this does not appear to be established. The edit was rejected 3-2. Also, it's a stretch to say that removing a link that doesn't work is a radical change. –  Eliah Kagan Mar 26 '13 at 14:15
    
@EliahKagan: The question itself is not even worth the effort, in my opinion. I've voted to close it instead. –  Martijn Pieters Mar 26 '13 at 14:35

If the link is dead (as in gone for good, not just unavailable due to a network failure or server misconfiguration), the best thing to do is to find where the page has moved. In cases such as this, where the resource is just gone, you did well to remove the link.

What you didn't do well is that you only removed the link, but left the surrounding text explaining the nature of the link. You should have removed that as well. You should also have noticed that the image is broken as well and removed it, as well as the bits that belong in the author's diary but not in a Stack Exchange question.

And when you take all of this out, here's what's left — the useful part of the question:

I wrote a basic tile engine, but having never attempted this before, I am really struggling with handling sprite collision detection and implementing realistic physics for gravity.

For any other game hobby writers, can you point me towards some walkthroughs on the best way to approach this?

(Followed by a follow-up question that nobody had answered anyway.)

In this instance, there isn't anything left to the question. So you should have edited the question, then flagged is as “not a real question”.

I disagree with the assessment that the edit was a “radical change”. Removing a broken and unfixable link cannot possibly be a “radical change”, since the link was not conveying any meaning whatsoever. “Too minor”, quite possibly.

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