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Recently I noticed an answer of mine had automatically been converted into a community wiki because I had edited it a bunch of times.

Needless to say I'm not happy about this and feel it was unfair — mainly because all the edits were my own. I wasn't aware of this "policy"; is it documented somewhere and is there any way to undo it?

Seems like this a bad policy since it doesn't take into account who's doing the updating and therefore discourages folks from going back and improving their answers — such as updating them to also cover later versions of the language, be more general, handle edge cases better, etc, as I (previously) tended to do for some of mine that had become relatively popular.

I'm tempted to mark this auto-conversion behavior as a bug...

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  • 24
    It was not a bug, but it also no longer happens.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Jan 30, 2015 at 19:38
  • 12
    Just so anyone reading this knows; the Wiki status has been removed now. Jan 30, 2015 at 19:41
  • 2
    @Andrew: It wasn't when I asked my question a little while ago.
    – martineau
    Jan 30, 2015 at 20:19
  • 17
    @martineau Right; I posted the comment above so people wouldn't think you were crazy saying it was Community Wiki, when it wasn't (anymore). If they are going to think you're crazy, they'll have to use another reason! Jan 30, 2015 at 20:38
  • 1
    So, if "it no longer happens," why did it happen? That definitely reads like a bug (that an old behaviour that should no longer happen is still happening).. Feb 1, 2015 at 14:41
  • @David: I don't know exactly when the conversion occurred -- I never got an alert or anything -- just happened to notice the change a week or so prior to posting my question about it here. Regardless , I still consider the fact that it didn't take into account who was making the edits a bug, whether it was being done intentionally or not.
    – martineau
    Feb 1, 2015 at 21:26
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    @DavidThomas The last edit to the answer was on Feb. 16, and the feature was removed in April, so presumably the conversion happened before the feature was removed.
    – JLRishe
    Feb 2, 2015 at 11:49
  • @animuson Are you sure it no longer happens ? See stackoverflow.com/a/28340855/1926369
    – vals
    Feb 5, 2015 at 17:14
  • 1
    @vals That user made their own post community wiki. Automatic conversion no longer exists. Community wiki still exists.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Feb 5, 2015 at 17:15
  • @animuson OK, Sorry :-)
    – vals
    Feb 5, 2015 at 17:16
  • @animuson it still happens stackoverflow.com/questions/30251369/…
    – UmNyobe
    May 15, 2015 at 6:33
  • @UmNyobe: From the edit history, it looks like you made your answer a Community Wiki yourself.
    – martineau
    May 15, 2015 at 9:02

1 Answer 1

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Until recently auto-conversion to Community Wiki was intentional, as a form of rate-limiting (if you bump the post too often you won't get any more points). The (mis-)feature was eventually removed in April 2014.

If you feel your edits were legitimate (not used to bump the post), flag it for moderator attention and request that the wiki status be removed. For your specific post, this has already been done.

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  • Thanks for the answer Martijn, especially the first link. I also wasn't aware that you got more points for bumping posts. (No one's complained about my question being a duplicate yet, although I swear I did a meta-search before asking it).
    – martineau
    Jan 30, 2015 at 20:18
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    @martineau: You don't get rep, as such, for editing your own posts. However, because this increases visibility, the question and answers can get more rep if the increased traffic brings more voters by. Jan 31, 2015 at 0:15
  • Same happened to my answer here: stackoverflow.com/questions/28627676/… What should I do?
    – CinCout
    Feb 20, 2015 at 12:21
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    @binaryBaBa: you checked the community wiki checkbox when you posted that answer. If that was in error, flag for moderator attention and request that the status is reversed.
    – Martijn Pieters Mod
    Feb 20, 2015 at 12:25
  • @MartijnPieters That, indeed, was a mistake! Flagged for moderator attention. Thanks for the quick response.
    – CinCout
    Feb 20, 2015 at 12:26

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