Several parties have said "don't invalidate with edits". Wonderful advice. As a guidance to anyone who edits, what does it mean to you the phrase "invalidate with edits" precisely? Obviously, an edit changes the relation between the question and existing answers, but what guidance can be given to help one decide if edits "no longer answers the question"?
4 Answers
Editing language is an inherently difficult process because semantics tends to be impacted with any change in syntax, however, there are degrees of ease and controversy when doing so.
I. An uncontroversially acceptable edit of a question includes:
A. Correcting spelling or grammar
B. Reworking a sentence that is badly worded
C. Reformatting the text to make it easier to read
D. Adding an appropriate quotation or reference
E. Adding hyperlinks to related articles such as SEP
F. Adding or linking to definitions of technical terms
G. Adding or changing tags
H. Changing the title or the text to make it explicit exactly what the question is
II. A more controversial but acceptable edit includes:
A. A significant reworking of the text to make it clearer, but in a way that is sympathetic to the presumed intentions of the author
B. Removing material that is incomprehensible or rambling
C. Redacting a question that is overly long
D. Clarifying an ambiguity or other issue, e.g. something identified within a comment
III. An unacceptable edit includes:
A. A change that alters the substance of the question to such an extent that it is unclear whether it reflects the intentions of the author
B. A change that effectively turns the question into a different question
C. A change that would make the content of the existing answers irrelevant to the question
-
1I've de-Continentalized my OP, and I thank you for the rubric. Sometimes I do get objectionably loose in my edits. This will help guide me in the future.– J DCommented Oct 18 at 17:05
-
@Kaia Given your concerns, I'll be referring to this rubric moving forward. Thanks for you conscientious feedback.– J DCommented Oct 18 at 17:10
-
2@JD As a side note, regardless of how you choose to format your own posts, you probably shouldn't edit other people's posts to change bullet points to letters. Bullet points are perfectly acceptable and appropriate and "good" formatting, at least on this site. But I'll leave that between you and Bumble. Commented Oct 18 at 17:44
-
@NotThatGuy Thank you for defending Bumble's Bullet Honor. If he has taken umbrage at my punctuational imperialism, he certainly has the right to roll back. I'd hate to perpetrate an editorial #metoo moment.– J DCommented Oct 18 at 17:50
-
@causative As our newest and least jaded sysadmin, would you be willing to elevate the core of Bumble's criteria into the FAQ's Help Center perhaps into a new category entitled 'Editing, Closure, and Reopening'? It seems that the venerable corpus of editorial wisdom might benefit from shoring up what is apparently the point of most friction in the community?– J DCommented Oct 18 at 17:54
-
And if you are busy (not everyone is as gracelessly idle as I), I'd be more than willing to provide a skeleton of text above and beyond this pithy and potent post.– J DCommented Oct 18 at 17:57
-
1@JD There's already a page on editing in the help center FWIW. Most of those pages are the same for all sites and mods are fairly limited in what they can edit there. Commented Oct 18 at 18:40
-
@NotThatGuy I suppose it's good enough Underwater Basket Weaving StackExchange, it should be good enough for us. Bumble's rubric is better because it underscores that a controversial edit might be a good edit if it is sufficiently justified, and on a site dedicated to fostering comprehension of justification, it would be a meaningful endorsement of the dialectic. Just more corporate stupidity. No wonder Monica started her own site.– J DCommented Oct 18 at 21:39
-
@NotThatGuy RE: Bullets vs Numbers: Especially on meta which is more about back-n-forth discussion, numbers are easier, eg. One can say Regarding your point 3 I agree but on point 4 not because ... With bullets its much clumsier– RushiCommented Oct 19 at 7:22
-
@Rushi Either way, bullet points are still a perfectly valid personal choice for formatting (if you want to propose banning bullet points on Meta, you can do that, although I don't expect it to be received well, but beyond agreeing to some clear formatting standards, we shouldn't just try to enforce our own formatting preference on other people's posts that already use appropriate formatting). But also, it wasn't edited to use numbering, it was edited to use letters. Numbering has supported formatting with indentation and custom spacing, but this is just some bold text. Commented Oct 19 at 7:34
-
If:
- at time t1, an answer answers a question; and
- later, at time t2, the question is edited; and
- as a result of that edit, the answer no longer answers the question in its edited form;
then the edit at t2 invalidated the answer.
-
@JD While one could potentially give examples, I don't know that we can give any more specific / more useful definition of what it means to answer or not answer a question. That's a subjective determination based on our understanding of the question and the answer, which in turn relies on the complexity in our understanding of language more broadly. A more answerable question might be whether, when and how much we should allow invalidation. Commented Oct 18 at 9:59
-
@NotThatGuy I think Bumble is on the right track. philosophy.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5988/40730– J DCommented Oct 18 at 16:19
This is my example of an improper edit of my answer.
- The editor made the edit without explanation.
- The addition is twice as long as my original accepted answer. Everything below "An analogy is not an equivalence" was added to my answer.
Since the author of the question edited my accepted answer, I didn't reverse the edit but I was annoyed.
I support making drastic edits because the user and the community have the ability to roll them back. This provides a natural mechanism by which undesirable edits can be rejected - heuristically, ad hoc, and semi-democratically, rather than in obeyance of "rules" from whoever claims to hold prescriptive authority. Drastic edits can contribute towards the function of the site as a public knowledge repository. There is something of a feedback loop in which claiming what people are "supposed to do" has no relevance insofar as users can still do as they please; except if enough users become convinced that they should do so, and begin to moderate that way. Community moderation is the actual phenomenon regulating what "can" and "can't" happen on the site.
