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Possible Duplicates:
Community Wiki checkbox missing in action
What can we do to make Community Wiki better?
Why can't I mark questions as community wiki?

I've noticed that people cannot make their own questions CW anymore. They instead have to get a mod to make it CW for them. What is the reason for the change?

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    Only questions. Normal users can still make their own answers community wiki.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Feb 17, 2011 at 17:26
  • @GraceNote: Ok, thanks. I'll edit my question.
    – Mark Szymanski
    Commented Feb 17, 2011 at 17:27
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    At any rate, this is a duplicate of this post, which more pointedly focuses on this post, which lightly glances over the reasons which are elaborated on here and here.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Feb 17, 2011 at 17:28
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    To save you the long reading - questions rarely have an actual need to become Community Wiki for the reason to which Community Wiki is designed (community ownership). This consequently led to the fact that most questions that were CW were done for either less-than-helpful reasons like trying to justify the presence of a discussion/poll, or because users didn't understand what CW even meant. It made it difficult to enforce proper behavior because it tainted the intent of the tool, so the option was removed in order to facilitate better utility of the site.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Feb 17, 2011 at 17:29
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    People were using the CW feature as tacit permission to post subjective and/or poll style questions.
    – Pollyanna
    Commented Feb 17, 2011 at 18:11

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It was done because it was seriously confusing new users, and people were creating Community Wiki posts when they didn't need them. Note that you don't need a mod to create them for you:

What are "Community Wiki" posts?

How does a post become a Community Wiki post?

There are several ways a question or answer can enter community wiki mode, and most of these ways will occur automatically based on the rules of the system.

Posts enter community wiki mode when one of the following happens:

  • The body of the post has been edited by at least five (5) different users.
  • The post has been edited ten (10) times by the original owner.

So if you edit your own question 10 times, you get a CW question!

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    That takes a minimum of almost an hour to accomplish alone, given the 5 minute grace period. It's also very annoying to do it just for that.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Feb 17, 2011 at 17:31
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    If it was done to prevent it's misuse by new users, then only have it disabled for new users only.
    – Brad Gilbert
    Commented Feb 17, 2011 at 17:37
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    I agree with @BradGilbert. It should be a reputation privilege.
    – Mark Szymanski
    Commented Feb 17, 2011 at 17:38
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    @Brad It wasn't just new users. New users made the problem worse, but they're far from the main reason.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Feb 17, 2011 at 18:09
  • @Grace: Good point. Note that I didn't say it was easy, just possible :-)
    – The Unhandled Exception
    Commented Feb 17, 2011 at 18:19

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