2

If I understand correctly, even in the private beta phase, the reputation threshold to edit other people's posts is 2000. While I've been doing my level best to try to get there :-) looking at the Users Page, it isn't obvious that anyone (perhaps other than Joseph) will get there much before the private beta stage is completed.

I think that the threshold ought to be a bit lower. There are a few posts that I've been itching to edit, and I think that the edits ought to be done before the public beta stage. As one example consider this answer. I'd really like to link the package name to the CTAN page, but can't. I'm also avoiding the temptation to request the edit in the comments, as I've already put some meta discussion in the comments, and more wouldn't look so good once we go public. Likewise, they are (as is inevitable) lots of silly typos across various pages.

I think it would be a good thing if we could establish best practices in our questions and answers early on. Allowing edits sooner would help that.

(Just so it is clear: I don't mean to pick on the user whose post I cited. There's other examples of a need for edits across the site and I am sure some of them are in my posts, too. It is only that I can edit my own, so if I became aware a need for editing, I've done it already.)

2
  • 1
    Completely agree on this. Every now and then I see typos on some of the questions/answers and I'm just desperately hoping to get enough rep just to go and fix them. Jul 29, 2010 at 20:23
  • You can (for now) point to links by just leaving a comment. (It doesn't help with typos, though.) You can delete the comment once the post is edited. Jul 30, 2010 at 2:22

1 Answer 1

1

Yes, you understand correctly. The reputation requirements are in beta are very reduced, right now they're at:

  1      Vote up  
  1      Leave comments  
  1      Vote down (costs 1 rep)  
  1      Edit community wiki posts  
  1      Vote to close, reopen, or migrate your questions  
  1      Create new tags  
  1      Retag questions  
  1      Vote to close, reopen, or migrate any questions  
  15     Flag offensive  
  200    Reduced advertising  
  1000   Show total up and down vote counts  
  2000   Edit other people's posts  
  10000  Delete closed questions, access to moderation tools 

They'll go up once we hit public beta, and again once we release. See this answer and the links in the question for a little more info. It appears that reputation requirements are configurable, I'm just not sure by how much.

In the end, though, I'd say that we don't need to reduce those numbers. There will be moderators and admins, so the users who have moderation powers won't be necessary while the number of users is under control. Until we have enough users to generate some 2000- or 10,000-rep people, I don't think that they'll be necessary.

2
  • Thanks for the response, but at least with respect to editing of posts before we go more public, I don't agree that mods and admins will suffice. I think we want to encourage those who arrive later to do things like provide links for packages they recommend, etc. Placing all of that burden on mods when, others will soon be able to edit doesn't seem the best way. If, early on, those inclined towards "tending the garden" were able to do so whilst the garden is fairly private and before weeds have set in. Anyway, thanks again for responding.
    – vanden
    Jul 30, 2010 at 0:43
  • @vanden - I agree that grammar fixes should not be high on the priority list for mods. However, I'd hope that current users would be open to recommendations on best practices and fixes. We should save the "Please format the word you wrote as 'Latex' as 'LaTeX'. See meta.tex.stackexchange.com/questions/66" (which is at -2...hm.) types of recommendations in comments so that they can be read, voted on, referenced, and standardized. Janitorial work for people who can't clean up after themselves is no fun, and we could instead work ourselves out of a job. Jul 30, 2010 at 2:26

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .