I have been pretty much going on an editing spree for answers with poor grammar. I want to make sure that it is allowed, since it is telling me I have too many pending edits and now I'm worried... In particular, is this considered spam?
2 Answers
Please don't bulk edit old posts (*). One of the central concepts of the stackexchange site is that edited posts are bumped to the top of the active question page. This normally allows users to easily see if there are posts with new activity, for example if an OP has clarified their question or a post got a new and interesting answer.
Language edits aren't that exciting to see in the active question list. It is understandable that a post here or there might be improved with an edit and that's a nice thing to do. However if done in bulk, they will take over the active question list and re-direct the focus away from posts, which actually need the attention.
If a post is already on the top of the active question page, editing is normally OK. Just keep in mind that as long as you are below 2000 points, 3 people will have to review your edits. So make sure you write understandable edit summaries to make their job easy and take a second to check if your edit is actually useful for the post before causing work for 3 reviewers.
answered Sep 14, 2023 at 12:19
samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyzsamcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz
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5!!! Aaaagh! I remember that nightmare! We did try to limit simultaneous updates so as not to bury the front page, but that made the cleanup take weeks during which someone trying to use corrupted code could be adversely affected. What is really needed in such a case is the (moderated) ability to say "don't bump to the front page". (Not all of those were caught. I found a lingering one a couple months ago.) Commented Sep 14, 2023 at 13:27
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1@barbarabeeton The ghosts of the broken backslashes still hunting the site :) Commented Sep 14, 2023 at 13:30
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1What about active posts? Or is there a way to edit without bumping the question up? Commented Sep 14, 2023 at 23:53
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2@NumberBasher New posts often need some love anyway (new users are not always familiar with the formatting options and other customs on SX sites, tagging can be be a bit hit-and-miss), so if you tighten up the language along the way that is appreciated. Since new posts will be in the active list anyway, editing them only bumps them up a little bit, which does not cause too much noise. As barbara said: There is no way to edit without bumping that is available to normal end-users of the site. ...– moeweCommented Sep 15, 2023 at 7:00
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3... So I strongly agree with this answer, try to limit editing older posts to the most egregious cases and avoid bulk-editing altogether.– moeweCommented Sep 15, 2023 at 7:01
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Since this seems to be the consensus, I'm accepting the answer for now. Commented Sep 15, 2023 at 7:03
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@NumberBasher If a post is already on the top of the active question page, editing is normally OK. Just keep in mind that as long as you are below 2000 points, 3 people will have to review your edits. So make sure you write understandable edit summaries to make their job easy and take a second to check if your edit is necessary before causing work for 3 reviewers (we had a user who would make unnecessary changes like adding some white space, which did not really do anything useful for the post. Such edits are to be avoided) Commented Sep 15, 2023 at 8:01
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2@NumberBasher If you would start your comment with the name of the user you are replying to, they would be notified of your reply and -- as a bonus -- you would not have to add nonsense characters to your comments. Commented Sep 15, 2023 at 8:04
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4Please be aware that views about grammar differ. While some things are clearly incorrect, others are more contentious. Some of your edits seem closer to cases of imposing your preferred style rather than correcting grammar. 'Edits welcome!' isn't incorrect, in my opinion. It's in a more informal register. Compare "Everyone welcome!" It's simple pedantry to insist this is ungrammatical. It's a phrase and it conveys something slightly different from "Everyone is welcome!" The former is a clear endorsement; the latter is not. The edit changes the meaning.– cfrCommented Sep 16, 2023 at 19:50
Actually the following does not focus on whether it is allowed, but on whether it needs to be done.
In order to do a proper edit, one needs to get the gist of the posting. If one can get the gist of the posting, why edit it?
In my opinion the posting is the "baby" of the author and if something needs to be done, it is up to the author in first place. Therefore I prefer suggesting edits to the author of a post via chat or comment to doing the edit oneself.
I know that suggesting edits via comments is not 100%ly in line with the company's policy regarding comments. Therefore, nowadays part of my commenting-policy is that I delete comments of mine myself when I realize that they turned obsolete. ;-)
I said "it is up to the author in first place". Of course, if an author of a posting cannot be reached any more, another way of handling the matter is needed.
From time to time with postings of mine I experience someone editing in order to make the text more readable. As English is not my first language I usually am thankful for that. In cases where the gist of the explanation gets distorted/turned into s.th. wrong, I undo the edit and add a note about the subtlety of why the attempt of explaining in the way of the one who edited would yield s.th. wrong. I do so as that info might lead to a better understanding.
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The problem is that the post has 2~3 grammar mistakes per sentence and requires a significant effort to read. There's also too many edits to fit in a comment... Or at least it would be annoying to do so in the first place. Commented Sep 17, 2023 at 0:55
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3Although I have some sympathy with this view, it isn't how SE sites work. Moreover, many posts in greatest need of attention are by authors who are no longer around or appear to be struggling to communicate. I have one particular post where I added a notice asking people not to edit because well-intentioned 'corrections' kept substituting wrong information, but that's a slightly special case. I certainly prefer when people ask me to edit rather than doing it, but it's not really The SE Way.– cfrCommented Sep 18, 2023 at 4:29
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2@NumberBasher In a case like that, I think editing is fine, but focus on new posts which are top of the page anyway and definitely don't mass edit answers. I only looked at one of your edits, so it may have been unrepresentative, but that one didn't have any significant problems at all. So either that was an outlier or you have a very different sense of what makes for substantive problems. Since you didn't make anything like 2-3 changes per sentence, I'm assuming you wouldn't say it did either.– cfrCommented Sep 18, 2023 at 4:36
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2I think a post can be made easier to read even if it is already intelligible. In some cases, removing/explaining abbreviations/jargon or improving the English can made the post intelligible for people who couldn't understand it otherwise (e.g. new to LaTeX or less familiar with English). So that person A can understand it doesn't mean it might not be good to edit it so person B, who speaks Chinese and is learning English, and C, who has no idea what the terms mean, can understand it, too.– cfrCommented Sep 18, 2023 at 4:39
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1As I said, I have sympathy with your view and prefer people to comment, but officially, that's not how it's meant to work (as I understand it). I suspect TeX SE is more tolerant of comments than SE policy encourages. I'm more than happy about that, but it is divergent from SE-imposed norms.– cfrCommented Sep 18, 2023 at 18:50
grammarexceed 10 letters