28
If you have a good answer to a question that's no longer there, it would be a great pity to leave things as they are, rather than have the benefit of your effort available to be easily found.
This is a problem that does come up a fair bit; generally once a good answer to a decent question that was posted appears, the poster should normally do no more than "...
26
The proportion of unanswered questions is indeed slowly growing because (among other things):
the number of people answering questions is growing more slowly than the number of people asking questions.
the proportion of very poor questions is increasing rapidly, sapping the time-resources of the very people who tend to answer questions into dealing with ...
20
This is a series of side-notes to @Glen_b's excellent answer.
Editing is a public service. Even some small edits can just clean up a post and make it easier for everyone to read, which is a positive contribution. Often an edit can change a question that looks too messy to wade through to one that looks readable. Editing can and should help the OP, who should ...
19
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 ...
17
While the MathJax/LaTeX table formatting is nice, it's a lot of work. I would not ask anyone to do it as a matter of routine. The added value is small, despite the prettier appearance.
If we spend a lot of time making perfect tables, fewer posts will be edited. Better several readable posts than one perfect one.
In this instance, I think best is the ...
16
These proposals are quite different.
Reduce the incentive to edit. To a reputation gain of 1? To 0? Already the incentive is very small and matches the idea that such edits are small (but positive) contributions. And the implication that any member is driven just by a desire for reputation is hard to test: we don't know what people's motives are unless ...
15
My thoughts first on what one does if one is writing a question:
If you're quoting a paper, you should quote it verbatim and then explain why the original is wrong (including quoting the correct statement from the earlier reference). If you really want to make it obvious, include "[sic]" inside the quote, immediately after the part that's wrong to highlight ...
15
I would like to express an active preference for the "code format" tables over Latex ones in most circumstances, particularly if the table has been aligned properly.
The ease of copying tables of data into a spreadsheet or script for further analysis or graphing is a huge advantage and something I regularly make use of. I have occasionally had to copy Latex ...
14
[Just to make clear, though my answers should always be read this way: this is personal opinion]
You don't need to have any intention of answering a question to edit it.
the difficulties facing the initial user may not be as conspicuous because the editor may have inadvertently filled in some critical conceptual gaps in the OP.
Where feasible, it's ...
14
The preferred solution is to flag the moderators, who have additional tools for limiting edits and, if necessary, limiting the abilities of individual users to interact on this site.
Mods can also create chat rooms and invite anybody--whether or not they have ever posted anything--to a private conversation. Occasionally this has helped reconcile ...
14
Based on number of posts:
Time of day: Looks like 3:00-7:00 (all times are UTC) is half as busy as 14:00-18:00
day of week: Saturday is the least busy day, followed by Sunday
combined: 6:00-7:00 Saturday is just over 20% as busy as 15:00-16:00 Wednesday
via this query --
http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/51030/posts-by-day-of-week-and-hour-of-...
14
I now have some experience with CV and other SE venues. I think CV is more challenging than others because questions are more technical and scientific, and also because subspecialization is the rule in statistics.
My recommendations to improve your likelihood of getting a correct answer are the following:
try to put your question in a comprehensible ...
14
kjetil b halvorsen is not bumping up old posts. They are improving questions, which in turn bump the questions because that is how Stack Exchange works. kjetil b halvorsen has edited 3,291 posts whereas you have edited 24 posts so far on CV, so you may not noticed it.
Stack Exchange users have repeatedly asked on main meta to have an option to edit the ...
13
I'd say No in broad terms, but as usual much depends on the details.
Positively, substantial new information could help a thread considerably, but that should typically be added through comments or very possibly as part of an answer.
But what's substantial? For example, if someone edited a literature reference to add detail or to add a URL, that's an ...
12
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.
If the only thing that needs to ...
answered Mar 14 '14 at 14:32
gung - Reinstate Monica
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12
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 ...
12
The code in the question was this:
df = data_frame(group = as.factor(rep(1:5, each=100)),
x = rep(seq(-3,3, length.out =100), 5),
y=as.numeric(dnorm(x, mean=means[group]) > 0.4*runif(10)))
In your answer you adapted it to
df <- data.frame(group = as.factor(rep(1:5, each=100)),
x = rep(seq(-3,3, length....
11
My answer is simply: Please just show the code.
To downplay the code, there are obvious possible signals, such as: The code is given at the end of the answer for those interested. Here is the code for those interested.
If the code is not interesting or useful or not in a language you use or can translate, you can ignore it in a flash. That comes really ...
11
Given that we have at least a few vision-impaired readers who have mentioned this fact on our site (and no doubt many more who don't post or don't mention it), I think we should attempt to add at least brief alt text as a matter of course -- it's just a matter of replacing "enter image description here" with a description of the image. Even a brief one-...
11
I routinely review every active question.
Old questions become active whenever they're touched by somebody. The "Community" bot often touches old questions that might have some value (because they were upvoted or answered).
I can no longer do this as thoroughly as I used to because there are about 200 new active questions every day. That's why we have ...
10
In general you should not fix a single letter typo; one exception would be if it's an important word in the title (since people search for those!). The fact that the system tries to prevent you from making very small edits is deliberate -- it tries to stop you because you probably shouldn't. The editing-privilege page says "Tiny, trivial edits are ...
10
Based on the discussion in chat and here my understanding is:
Pleas for help should be removed as part of a larger edit, just like "Thanks", and <poster's name/signature>.
Smaller edits produce benefits (they make threads more readable for future readers, and set a better example of the site's standards and expectations for future posters) and costs (...
10
I want to agree with Glen_b here, but more emphatically. Once a question has been asked and has received an answer, it is not appropriate for the OP to change the question. That wastes the time of the person who answered, and gives the false impression that they did not answer the question correctly. Once answers have come in, edits to the question should ...
10
Please don't guess what the original poster (OP) intended. When the meaning is clear but poorly worded, then rewriting should be fine. The danger lies in making implicit assumptions (of which you might not even be aware) in formulating your original understanding of the question. Be cautious.
This is what the commenting mechanism is for: post a comment ...
10
(To make sure this gets an answer)
As whuber mentions, there's an automatic mechanism to detect large numbers of edits and flag the moderators (the community bot is a source of a variety of flags of unusual/noteworthy behavior ... including this issue).
We can then take a look and see if the behaviour is a problem or not. For example, someone may tend to ...
9
I agree with @NickCox that as a general policy answer edits should only be "minor" (copy editing), i.e. improve grammar, fix spelling and LaTeX mistakes, format the quotes and code blocks, insert full references and hyperlinks to papers, etc.
Substantial (major) changes should not be made via edits; if you think that an answer is incorrect or not entirely ...
9
There are minimum reputation levels to earn the privilege to edit: 100 to edit CW posts, and 2k to edit non-CW posts (and 20k to edit tag wikis). There is no minimum to suggest edits, however.
The suggested edits just need to be approved by reviewers like you and I. When you are reviewing edits, you have several options: one that I use in cases like you'...
answered Sep 18 '15 at 20:59
gung - Reinstate Monica
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9
Although I also prefer shorter titles, I am less worried about their length than @amoeba. At any rate, I agree that you should go ahead and edit the title. The title and the tags are often what people have access to when searching / perusing the site. Getting them right has an enormous influence on the organization and usability of the site. Your own ...
answered Feb 14 '15 at 15:28
gung - Reinstate Monica
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9
Do not re-tag more than 5 old threads at a time.
9
As for me, the whole idea about self-study is that people are working on some exercise and are looking for some hints since they are stuck. Copying-and-pasting a textbook exercise produces off-topic rather then self-study questions.
In my opinion, any new user who and pastes a homework question should be encouraged to show some effort in solving it, or at ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible