Hot answers tagged

44

The StackExchange model is based round the idea that the sites are not forums, but that questions and answers should have some element of generality. As such, 'good' questions should be focussed on the matter in hand, ideally without many things that might make good forum posts. That's one reason that 'thanks' is discouraged and why community edits are ...


42

I think any improvement on an existing answer is valid. It would be far more helpful to have current information than to have outdated yet functional answers. Even if this means you replace 50 lines of code with a new \usepackage and a single command. The reason should be obvious: Answers here are meant to benefit the community, which is always changing. ...


33

I think that editing a question after you've received good answers to it is generally bad practice, especially if it would change the validity of the answers. If what you need could be done with a minimal change, it might be possible to add a comment to each answer with an extra question. This will notify the original answerers and let them update their ...


32

You're dealing with people here, and some people are just different. They may not like other's removing their signatures, their "Thank You's", correcting their CaPiTaLiZaTioNS, ... Having been here for a while, I have grown accustomed to the communal attitude and nature - something that most likely guided you in your edit. That's honourable, and that's that....


31

I am one of those users who consistently reject removing thanks edits. The Stackoverflow people started an utopia to make the questions anonymized and general as much as possible. Thanking is considered to be somehow useless in terms of know-how. But time showed that every SE site has a different flavor and similarly we have developed a different path in ...


28

Well we've had this discussion on other grounds too, as you well know, but I think that since the language of the site is English, editing other-language typographical practices doesn't seem to me to be so out of line, especially if the question is already active. While it's true that it could be thought of as too minor an edit, and could be rejected on ...


27

A clear approach doesn't mean that everybody does it the same way, such things can happen. It also depends on who reviewed your edit: possibly the questioner rejects it, because he posted the "thanks" and wants to keep it. An experienced reviewer may accept it, because a "thanks" below the question doesn't add know-how value to the site in the long sight. ...


23

To round up the comment thread. You seemed to be surprised that the edit should be reverted in is entirety rather than being fixed/improved. In fact reverting is the natural action to take in this circumstance. Someone who decides to edit a question (or answer) can decide to do it at a time convenient for them, and to spend as much or as little time as ...


22

A list of (probably) all posts that show this problem is returned by the following query https://data.stackexchange.com/tex/query/695628/posts-probably-affected-by Which returns 11554 postings, this shows all the pre-2014 postings on the site whose initial unedited markdown has a single backslash followed by four spaces, or spaces and a tab. This is a (...


21

On behalf of the team, thank you very much to everyone who participated in fixing the backslash problem. It really was excellent, amazing work. Editing is always underappreciated, and this must have been all the duller to do by hand because it was looking at the same bit of code formatting over and over rather than cleaning up prose. I apologize for our ...


19

I completely agree with David's comments. The edit fixed some grammar issues, but also changed the meaning of the question. The problem was in the usage of "all the time that", an almost word by word translation from Italian "tutte le volte che" ("each time" would have been a proper translation). Unfortunately, "all the time" has a different meaning in ...


19

I would say that it's up to the owner of the post to decide whether they feel editing the code formatting is okay or not, not a third party. When someone's answer is edited, they are notified and can make the call themselves. Maybe they think of the new code formatting as an improvement and are happy about it; if not they can undo the changes themselves.


19

I've done this before. My guidelines are: Keep the original possible duplicate. That was, after all, the majority view. If I disagree with this then I'd want to discuss it first (here or in chat). Make the plurality clear: "Possible duplicate s" and put them in a list. Other than that, this is a good idea so long as it really is a possible duplicate and ...


17

The first thing to bear in mind here is that while there are places where there are StackExchange rules/polices, on editorial matters 'guidelines' is a much more accurate term. (Rules are clearly appropriate for legal matters, for example.) Each StackExchange network site has its own conventions, and those are to some extent 'organic'. They also need to work ...


16

Editor Sign Up List Texmaker: doncherry (Win7), hpesoj626 (linux). Updated 2013-02-28 TeXworks: Joseph Wright, tohecz (linux). Updated 2013-03-09 TeXnicCenter: Werner, percusse. Updated 2013-03-15 TeXStudio: hpesoj626 (linux). Updated 2013-03-09 TeXShop: Alan Munn Vim: Psirus. Updated 2013-03-09 Emacs: Charles Stewart (OSX, linux), Tyler Smith. Updated 2013-...


16

I prefer that the edit isn't just "removed thanks"; however, the first thing I look at when I review an edit is the time when the message was posted. If it's less than a couple of hours I usually don't bother and accept (or improve) the edit, because the edit follows the guidelines (right or wrong, they exist). If the message is older, I accept the edit only ...


16

I think this is a really bad idea. We strive to be an inclusive site, and enforcing such capitalizations is a great way to foster exactly the opposite view: "there are those of us who know the 'right' way and you are in the group that doesn't know the 'right' way." As for editing, editing a post just for such 'errors' is also inappropriate; if there are ...


16

There is no formal way of preventing this behaviour as editing a post is assumed to improve it, and the subsequent bump is a by-product. Since the site is community driven, improper use of this technique can be discussed in the chat room - to seek confirmation (just to make sure you're not seeing things that aren't there) and perhaps brought to moderator ...


15

I see my name there with this; SE policies and even internal consensuses seem to not be clearly communicated to users here on TeX.SE (two technically incorrect comments both received upvotes) (This btw is a larger problem with a couple of other communities as well, however this is one of the oddest cases I have found) Well this is very simple from my ...


15

In the situation you described I should say "absolutely not". In my opinion, the correct way to act, to not waste the answer, is that the answerer should ask a new question where to put his/her answer and delete the original answer. In this way the original question remains unanswered (someone else will answer, seeing its status) and the original answer is ...


14

If the addition to a question is minimal, you can leave a comment as clarification. For almost everything else, I would suggest that editing your question is a far better option than having a discussion-style commentary. Comments are not always shown - it depends on the number of them, and the votes they've received. There are some considerations in terms ...


14

I would add something like "Package" or "Class" to use the correct call with \usepackage or \documentclass. To change only the first letter of a heading to an capital letter is no good practice. Do it only if the post needs improvement too or has to be retagged.


14

As commented in the posting that you quote initially, any assessment of whether consensus has been reached has to take account of the possibility of low participation. That clearly applies in the case of the meta site here which has far lower participation than the main site. So a simple appeal to the current voting figures on a question doesn't really have ...


14

This is the limit on edits: Users with 2K+ reputation: These users have the edit privilege, implying they can make edits without it requiring approval by peers; Users with < 2K reputation: These users are subject to peer-reviewed edits (by those above) that should be substantive. Substantive here means at "at least 6 characters". First of all,...


13

I edited the code. The indentation was positively misleading, as nested functions are always indented further than the function they are nested in. Indeed, the original poster used this convention in most of their code, so clearly the incorrect indentation was in error. I also moved the closing parentheses so that the code was in a more conventional lisp ...


13

Generally you can place a bounty on your question, but this requires more reputation than you have now. If you didn't got any answers now, maybe your question wasn't phrased very well or misses something else. Have another look on it and try to improve it. This will also place it on the first page again.


13

I'd like to share my two cents. One day, while answering Why were my edits rejected?, I said: Since every site is community-driven, we try to adapt things to our reality and not the other way around. Our methods would probably not work in other sites, say Math.SX or Spanish.SX. Sometimes, when I hear the words "SE policy" said in the wild, the walking ...


13

This is already partly provided when rejecting a suggested edit: You are provided with a number of canned responses, including a custom message where you can "clearly explain why you are rejecting the edit": Here is an example of a rejected edit I made displaying a custom message*: The suggester of the edit can review their suggestions by clicking on the ...


13

I used to be concerned with writing an edit summary, but have since only used it sparingly. The only time I write something is when I think the edit itself won't explain what was done. Why? Every user is able to view the (edit) history of a post - just visit <site>/posts/<postid>/revisions. That history shows a side-by-side change of what was ...


12

In my experience, the OP does not always choose a title relevant to the problem s/he's facing. Example: Tex doesn't work A poorly chosen title is, of course, forgivable in many cases; the origin of the problem may not be obvious. However, someone posting an answer that solves the OP's problem, or any subsequent visitor to the page who is savvy enough, ...


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