I can see in this answer that questions shouldn't be asked with "thank you"s, "cheers", etc. But should we remove these during editing? I'm asking because the policy on the Mathematics site is to leave "thank you"s in place, so I don't want to make any assumptions.
Also, sometimes I see posts that begin with "This question is too simple for this site", or similar. It seems less obvious that that should be edited out, but should that text go too?
Like so much around here, this pivots on the slight tension between
Individual posters with short-term goals of getting an answer, who almost always want to express appreciation of your attention, their need for an answer, their gratitude if you provide one, and so forth. That's all fine, and I have no inclination to dismiss or downplay politeness.
The long-term goals of the forum, of building up posts with concise, clear and correct questions and answers as an archive for all interested. These goals are what drive a desire to cut out material that doesn't help technical understanding. Even cutting 5% of a post that isn't needed is 5% cut for possibly many future readers in a busy world. Questions and answers are public statements that happen to be written by individuals, rather than personal statements that happen to be visible widely.
I say: We really can assume goodwill from essentially all concerned, except in a very few cases, and those separately require different treatment. So, although naive or new posters sometimes pad their posts, the silent reply is Thanks for the thanks, but we don't need that. Sometimes I will comment on the point if it seems appropriate, but I can't claim to be consistent on that. Sometimes I am in a hurry too, and irritated by someone's sloppy and careless presentation (with latitude when it's evident that English is not the first language).
I edit quite frequently. I usually edit for concise style, improved grammar, spelling and punctuation, and improved presentation of mathematics and code; but I will also cut down emotive content, including not only extended thanks, over-lengthy personal statements, and pleas of desperation or urgency. I think it's germane that those edits are very rarely reversed, although it is clearly very possible that many people never noticed, or did notice and disapprove, but lack the time and inclination to do anything about it.
There are some good answers here. My policy (and I think the default overall), is that if I edit, I remove all peripheral comments, be they 'thanks', '-Bob', 'I'm not a statistician, sorry about the dumb question...', etc.
A topic that hasn't been covered much yet is deciding when to edit, or to approve suggested edits.
reject as 'too minor'. The more of such stuff there is, the more likely I am to edit.
If I edit for whatever reason, I will always remove this sort of thing as well. If I review a suggested edit in which these have been left in, I will click improve and remove them before approving.
I don't think there's a formal policy, but I'll talk about what I've noticed myself doing.
If someone just says 'thanks', I tend to leave it, even when doing a lengthy edit, even though it strictly doesn't belong.
However, if I'm removing a subsequent signature, I may take 'thanks' as well.
If it's a long rambling thanks (say a couple of sentences) I take it out.
I object to the distraction of put-downs of the question or apologies for asking a basic question by the asker and tend to have a strong impulse remove those or encourage the OP to. (Not least because it puts down other users of the site with the same problem. They may think they're only calling themselves dense or uneducated, but since the questions are permanent, and often posted questions are questions other people have, ... they aren't)
There's potentially a similar put-down with the basic-concepts tag. I'd say easily 2/3 of the posts with the tag don't come remotely close to being basic (people tend to underestimate the non-basicness of their problems, sometimes drastically), and many of the ones that could rate such a tag ... well, I often wish they wouldn't, for the same reason I don't like "sorry this is such a dumb question".
We were all ignorant once - what's so wrong with a basic question that we must apologize for it? I don't come here only to answer questions at the outer edge of my knowledge. Indeed, sometimes formulating a good answer to what looks like a relatively simple question can be a surprisingly subtle task, and the review of the basics from a variety of viewpoints can often be helpful even when it's reasonably familiar territory.
Of the emotive statements that come up, the kind that tend to get me the most is begging. I find those particularly objectionable. (I don't so much object to a simple factual statement about time pressure, but multiple lines of "PLZ answer my question" or even worse, a title with it... that stuff pushes my buttons for several reasons at once.
[basic-concepts] tag. I never really thought about it. I have added it to a couple of Qs, but never in a pejorative way. Come to think of it, do you suppose it's a meta-tag? I haven't had any big objection to it, but maybe it should be banned. I always thought of it as a way to collect several categories that might be too small otherwise; basically for the type of info that comes in the 1st 1/3 of stats 101 (eg, difference b/t mean & median, what is a histogram, etc).
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Commented
Mar 14, 2014 at 14:15
Personally I leave "thank you" statements or the like. It is nothing that clutters up the question and at the end of the day it's nice if people are friendly. A different thing is when someone has a lengthy introduction which is about anything else but statistics. Fortunately this rarely happens.
I've never seen anyone starting their answer with "this is too simple for this site" or likewise statements, though I'd apply the same rule of thumb as before: if it clutters up the text due to excess length then it has to go. Otherwise I would just leave it even though I think it's not very polite to begin an answer this way. What is a trivial problem for some users can be a huge challenge for others.
From the perspective of a beginner trying to gain a foothold in machine learning through CrossValidated, a reasonably lenient policy on things like "thank you"s seems to be helpful, for several reasons that I haven't yet seen brought up in this thread:
I haven't seen any of this yet at CrossValidated, whose members have impressed me with their civility and generous help so far, but that isn't the case at a lot of other forums for related topics at StackExchange and other sites, particularly programming ones. There are two principal temptations which can ruin sites like this (both of which come from hubris): the experts who think they can't possibly be wrong and let everyone else know it, and their nemeses, amateurs who pretend to know a lot more than they do. If either one gets out of control, people become reluctant to post because they have to brace themselves for what sometimes amounts to outright abuse (I can name specific forums where semi-famous experts in various fields make a sport of ridiculing newbies and engage in shocking public meltdowns, but I won't). The damage from that sort of atmosphere is incalculable because we'll simply never know how many lurkers never signed up for the site or posted (as I have for many years in the forums I'm referring to). It can occur silently, with no outward signs like falling membership numbers, but with devastating effect.
Newcomers like me can't do much about the problem of supercilious experts (which I've seen no signs of so far at CrossValidated), but we can put a drop in the bucket towards solving its polar opposite by short expressions of gratitude and the occasional short disclaimer of inexperience. I would be less comfortable about posting if such niceties were regulated too aggressively, because it allows me to consciously nip a potential source of tension in the bud. Other posters, particularly ones who've spent years earning the right to speak on these issues, are less likely to misconstrue posts and take offense if gratitude and humility are expressible in reasonable proportions.
The subject matter in forums like these can be highly technical and taxing to think about, plus working with data mining software can be frustrating at times. This can raise the tension level further, whereas the occasional expression of basic courtesy can reduce it.
Tone of voice is difficult to get across in Internet discussions, where people tend to freely mix on-point information with casual conversation; that's why in chat I consciously use emoticons a lot to avoid misunderstandings. "Thanks" etc. sometimes serve the same purpose.
All three points suggest that an overzealous approach to editing out "thanks" and disclaimers etc. can actually reduce the quality of the answers in the long run. Why? If people don't post questions, there are no answers, regardless of quality or length. Fanatical text slashing can be as self-defeating as fanatical accounting, where 0 expenses and 0 income also equals a balanced budget. I don't see that happening here: in fact, the moderators have been generous in letting me ask questions verbosely, which can also end up reducing the amount of text in the long run by avoiding unnecessary replies based on misreading of questions. "Thanks" are in order for maintaining that balanced policy so far...when in doubt, I'd always lean towards a more lenient response.
