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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 It would be far more helpful to have current information than to have outdated yet functional answers.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.
...
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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....
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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 ...
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 (...
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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 ...
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
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
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,...
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 ...
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 ...
11
This is an idea that comes up fairly frequently, on all different sites, with the best of intentions. In addition to the link Paul gave, there's Is it possible for me to edit my answer without bumping the question up the list?, Is there a way to edit a question without bumping it to the front page?, Could we have the ability to mark a change as minor in ...
11
Some very good points have already been made, but I would like to add one thing. As noted in other answers, not a lot of the site membership visits Meta very often. So I propose to look at the behavior of users in the main site itself, as a rudimentary gauge of the prevailing view on the site.
I did these tabulations by hand, and there is certainly a ...
11
This is more of an extended comment than an answer, but I think it is quite important to clear something up, here.
We are not talking about consensus.
The Stack Exchange network is not set up to facilitate consensus-based decision making processes. Speaking from both personal experience and from having read theories of consensus, consensus is often hard to ...
11
Given that this seems to come up every now and again, generally brought up by users from Stack Overflow who wish to enforce the Right Way™ of doing things at TeX.SX,1 I thought it might make sense to try to provide a more comprehensive answer, taking into account some of the discussion that has ensued, in particular the discussion in:
Why were my edits ...
11
According to the help topic What should I do if no one answers my question? users are encouraged to "edit your question to provide status and progress updates. Document your own continued efforts to answer your question. This will naturally bump your question to the homepage and get more people interested in it."
Even if someone edits their question only ...
11
Fundamentally edits should improve a post. However, minor typos - things that don't change the context of the post - should really be avoided.
I think the biggest reason behind this stems from the fact that an edited post becomes active, and active posts get bumped to the front page. In that case, chaning "teh" to "the" or removing "Thanks!" doesn't really ...
10
Removing greetings, "Thanks" and signature
Removing "thanks" from questions
Why is "thanks" inappropriate at the end of a question?
Etiquette: Should I edit questions with "Thanks" or wait for Moderator?
What to do about a post when the OP insists on putting a thanks at the end?
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Capitalization (of TeX, LaTeX and Friends) and Markup
Prompting the user to change "latex" to LaTeX
"Official" capitalizations of words from the TeX world
What is the policy on adding keyboard markup?
9
Answers in the comments
Adding the "accepted" mark to a question or to a comment
What if a comment answers a question?
Why do people answer in comments?
9
Since this is the way StackExchange works, I assume it is absolutely OK. If not, I am sure this feature will be removed.
Regularly, I reread my own questions and answers. If I see errors, or a sentence that should be rephrased to improve the language, I will do that.
9
Stack Exchange keeps track of the days you were active on the site, but not the separate hours. So you won't be able to see how long you have been active, but you will be able to see the days on which you logged in.
To view this, click on the "calendar" in the bottom-right of your profile page.
You can scroll back and identify the days where you were ...
8
It's difficult to tell which, but you may be short on any one of the restrictions in terms of the badge requirements. Here are the edit-related moderation badge descriptions:
Editor
bronze; awarded once
Edit any post
Strunk & White
silver; awarded once
Perform a total of 80 edits between questions, answers, and tag wikis
Copy Editor
gold; awarded ...
8
It looks like a suggested edit by I think a non-registered user. Community gets assigned quite a few of these sort of things: perfectly normal.
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I'm not a lawyer, and copyright laws differ from country to country, but in the U.S., copyright does not need to be asserted: it exists the moment you produce the work. So in reality there is no such thing as "unknown copyright"; the safest assumption is that it belongs to the author or has been transferred to someone else. That said, it seems to me that ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible