3

I see that this answer is going through a lot of changes which has gone without a concrete and objective explanation. I don't find this to address the issue in a convincing manner though.

There certainly were problems with that answer but the way it got handled seems highhanded.

Problems with the post:

Why does the treatment seem highhanded and incorrect, with questions:

  1. This edit assumed that the things mentioned in there were inflammatory. Where

    and unfortunately our Muslim brothers don't let us take photo of it.

    was most probably taken for it. Why not treat it as information? If it's inflammatory to some but is nonetheless information, then why not treat it as such.

    I don't recall posts being edited out on Stack Overflow or any other site if says that

    unfortunately I can't say much about the bug because our fellow developer decided to keep it closed source. But you could get about it by ....

    The referred developer shouldn't care nor should the supporters of their idea. Readers on the other hand would find it as a convenient, useful and relevant information. What's wrong with it?

  2. The author was not comfortable with the edit and did a soft rollback (spelling fixes kept). Cool. Nobody questioned the action. And the post was deleted without an explanation. What was the reason for that deletion?

  3. The post got into a dissuaded edit-war. Why was the edit of the same style made again?

  4. Why was it undeleted again?

  5. Then the post was locked. How was the content disputed? What discussion on meta culminated into a community agreed policy being violated by that post if it were to be rolled-back?

  6. Finally it was made Community-Wiki. Didn't see it coming. Why was made such?

  7. Why has all that transpired with much explanation and/or comments?

1

I originally deleted that answer because, I viewed it as not befitting with our currently updated policies, as well as I viewed as "attacky".

My deletion of the answer was discussed with another mod, who believed that it shouldn't be deleted because our copy paste policy applies to to analytic text, and not primary text. In the end we agreed that I should un-delete it, edit out some of the parts to blunt the language, and lock it so it cannot be rolled back.

Now all this was done because the quotes in Ezati's answer does directly answer the question, and the answer is to some point decent, then she posts her meta post requesting her post to be re-deleted as she could not edit it but the moderators can, so under the assumption she doesn't want her name on the answer, I set it to community wiki because it was still to some point a decent answer.

  • Amazing. Totally reversing the problem. My request to unlock the post or roll back the edition has been understood by you as if my major problem was my name under the answer!!! I really want to know if you yourself are ok with your logic! – Zahra Ezati Apr 18 '14 at 11:56
  • 2
    @Ezati Please realize that using rhetoric in answers and post can give a bad impression to a valuable post and the site in general. Please be collaborative and engage in constructive, objective and academic discussions. – Bleeding Fingers Apr 18 '14 at 14:02
  • @BleedingFingers Well, if that's the case I've no problem with my post being re-deleted. But I cannot stand its current form: malformed, locked and marked as Community Wiki. I really prefer it was still deleted (without any edition) rather than in this form. – Zahra Ezati Apr 18 '14 at 14:16
  • Would you prefer to have the last question in the answer, referred to in the question above, removed and the rest of it remain the way it is? That would be fair enough. But that still wouldn't make that answer meet the site's current policy. – Bleeding Fingers Apr 18 '14 at 17:10
  • @BleedingFingers Sorry to reply this late. Actually you had forgotten to use the @ sign. Finally I got the chance to edit my answer myself. I'll try to do it by the end of today. Hope that puts an end to all these arguments. – Zahra Ezati Apr 19 '14 at 11:09
2

I can't really speak for the recent activity, as I was not the moderator who made those decisions, but given that I am the one who made the original edit mentioned in the first point, I can at least provide some insight.

First of all, the claim made in your seventh point is a bit misleading as many of the comments that would've explained things were deleted (obsolete) after the situation that prompted them was resolved. At that time, many of the users were still very new to the site, and the Stack Exchange model in particular, and failed (or outright refused) to bring issues to meta choosing instead to hash things out as comments. Comments, being ephemeral by design, are not particularly well-suited to provide a permanent record of such matters.

Secondly, you need to understand the context of the time. Sectarianism has always been a problem with this site, but back when I first made that edit, sectarianism was far far worse than it is today. As a moderator, I was having my hands full just dealing with all the flags that were pouring in. Partisan voting was all the rage, Shi'ite users were leaving and trying to form their own site on Area51, high-reputation Sunni users where threatening to delete their accounts, Qur'an-only Muslims were just plain refusing to answer because they knew they would only be downvoted: You could pretty much name any group, and they'd be actively complaining about the state of the site. Despite calls to behave and treat others with respect, many users were just more interested in arguing and debating than they were in building a viable Q&A site.

It was right in the midst of this mess that Ezati's post was written. This post quickly attracted not only a large number of upvotes, but also a large number of downvotes; even if you discount the possibility of partisan voting, that many conflicting votes in such short order is a pretty strong indication that the post itself is controversial. The fact it also blatantly prompted nothing but argument with its last two sentences was not helping matters at all.

Arguments were already starting within the comments (long deleted for being non-constructive), and users were already commenting on the antagonistic nature of the post with no indication that the author was willing to fix, or even acknowledge, the problems. I chose to edit out the inflammatory bits before things got any more out of hand than they already were, and those edits were immediately rolled back. In retrospect, I probably should've locked the post back then (as it is locked now) to put a cap on things rather than letting it sit unactioned for as long as it did, but the moderators basically decided to let it stay and let the community vote it down as it saw fit.

As for whether the side-note on how "our Muslim brothers don't let us take photo of it" was useful, deleting that may have been a bit overzealous of me; if only that line was reverted leaving the rest redacted, I wouldn't really have had any significant problem with it. However, it is not difficult to find conspiracy theories on forums regarding the Saudi's attempts to conceal the crack and outright refusal to admit it's a miracle which just degrade into pointless bickering, and given how sensitive many of the Sunni users were at the time it could very easily be construed as such a jab. Which is not to say that that was Ezati's intent with the side-note, but given the general argumentative nature of the post, the unstable nature of the site at the time, the fact that it really didn't add any actual value to the answer, and how counterproductive pointless bickering is to building a viable Q&A site, I felt it was better safe than sorry.

  • Just commenting on the obsolete part of the answer. Well, like you said it's obsolete. The words in there are no more relevant. If after the rollback they again became relevant then those comments could very well be reinstated. I don't think that was the case because after the edit, referred to in the question, the comments which are still visible became irrelevant/obsolete too. And since only they are sticking around right now I'm forced to assume that the actions on the post were not explained. – Bleeding Fingers Apr 18 '14 at 14:11
  • @BleedingFingers Assume what you want. As far as I'm concerned, the entire argument should've been handled in meta to prevent exactly this sort of misunderstanding, but as I said, when the author involved refuses to do so there's not really anything to do about it. I don't care enough about the post to instigate a meta discussion one way or another; I made an edit (and I stand behind that edit 100%) and suggested Ezati take the discussion to Meta if she disagreed, she just rolled back and continued arguing in comments instead, and I washed my hands of it. – goldPseudo Apr 18 '14 at 18:51

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