Timeline for How to overcome "Edits must be at least 6 characters"
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
40 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 3, 2022 at 20:50 | comment | added | Darren Parker | Please remove the min char change for edits rule. | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 11:42 | comment | added | Ingo Steinke | -1, sometimes there isn't | |
| May 8, 2021 at 14:32 | comment | added | Nat Kuhn | Today I saw a typo on an otherwise excellent answer. Two letters were transposed. Easy to fix. Hard to find "something else to improve," and especially if it's something I'm not actually an expert in, I worry about making the post worse. And of course, if I were an expert, I wouldn't be looking at this answer. So I added an extra comments asking the edit-approver to delete it. Pedantic changes will usually be over 6 characters anyway (trust me, I know pedantic). This adds a large cognitive load to otherwise helpful edits. I like the suggestion of adding an HTML comment, from @endolith, below. | |
| Apr 20, 2021 at 18:09 | comment | added | Module_art | @GraceNote Wow how stupid is that? just look for other changes that can be made. So you suggest to invent new problems where no other problem exist. People like you have a rep over 80k. because of guys like you this site is so bad and probably u are using your digital power to shut others down. Bravo | |
| Mar 22, 2021 at 10:22 | comment | added | 6infinity8 | -1 This is a wrong assumption. | |
| Dec 30, 2020 at 22:38 | comment | added | StingyJack | "Please consider adding a comment if you think this post can be improved" the irony =/. Sometimes I dont feel like searching around for several minutes to find 6 characters in a smallish post. I just want to make "ad-hock" read "ad-hoc". This rule forces me to make changes possibly outside of the original author's intent just to fix a common spelling mistake.. | |
| Jul 3, 2020 at 19:50 | comment | added | Welcor | some code format edits really improve a question. But changing other stuff in the question is useless and wasting the time of the person improving the question. | |
| Mar 19, 2020 at 22:39 | comment | added | Dylan Nicholson | Sorry, I can't see any possible harm coming from allowing users to suggest edits that may involve a small number of characters but a significant improvement in post clarity. | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 0:25 | comment | added | elig | No, That's fine. We will just leave typos so uninformed user can become even more perplexed. We are uber-geeks after all | |
| Jun 13, 2017 at 19:39 | comment | added | Wowfunhappy | Ran into the six character limitation, became pissed, Googled, and found this answer. Then I reread the post I was editing, and realized there were actually lots more tiny improvements I could make. System working as intended! | |
| Jun 22, 2015 at 17:08 | comment | added | Mnementh | That answer don't work. It happens that a post has a simple typo, switched characters or missing or wrong character. Nothing else to edit in the post. The limit is just stupid. | |
| May 18, 2015 at 16:55 | comment | added | deadboy | Perhaps this rule could be escaped in code blocks then. Many times I've copied either incorrect code or out of date shell/batch commands. Especially in the latter case updating them ensures that answers always remain up-to-date and additionally could result in less noise overall. Which adds more noise/confusion to the site: a few edits on some code or a nearly duplicate question because the original one was slightly out of date and a confused user wasn't able to figure out a solution? | |
| Apr 7, 2015 at 19:32 | comment | added | Martin Schwehla | @AndrewCheong When I see an obvious single fault in a text, I don't think it is fussy to correct it in the first place, nor do I find it reasonable to conclude that I now have to draw my full attention to the whole of the post, regardless of my intentions or qualifications as to its special content, or field of expertise. As I understand it, this is always intended to be a collaborative effort where also small contributions count. | |
| Mar 15, 2015 at 15:26 | comment | added | Mitch Goshorn | So in order to not waste reviewers' time with a bunch of unnecessary edits, we should hide our necessary edit in a pile of unnecessary edits? | |
| Feb 28, 2014 at 22:07 | comment | added | Brian J. Fink | @Aaron I agree. When they ask a question like that one, they don't really expect a negative answer. It would be like saying, "Aren't there other ways to improve this post?" to which the correct answer would be assumed: "Of course! How silly of me! Yes, there are!" Of course, a human being would know the difference, but a script just obeys the instructions it received from its author. It's like the line by Will Smith from I, Robot: "Just lights and clockwork." | |
| Feb 10, 2014 at 15:12 | comment | added | endolith | @acheong87 You're making 2 invalid assumptions. 1. A flow of minor/pedantic edits is a good thing, not a bad thing; anything that improves the site's content should be welcomed. 2. Character count is not in any way related to the importance of an edit. Some small edits are extremely helpful, some small edits are not. Some large edits are helpful, some large edits are pointless. | |
| Feb 4, 2014 at 8:33 | comment | added | musiKk | I recently tried to fix a broken link which required removing 3 characters. Couldn't do it so I left it as is. It's extremely discouraging as I spent a couple of minutes finding out the correct URL. I probably won't do that again. | |
| Jan 29, 2014 at 10:28 | comment | added | Aaron Digulla | -1 I also dislike the "rules are smarter than reality" attitude of this rule. At the very least, there should be "I'm sure there is nothing else to fix" override button. | |
| Dec 14, 2013 at 9:49 | comment | added | Andrew Cheong | "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Most people understand things just fine despite bad spelling and/or grammar (and if it's really that bad, then you're gonna have more than 6 characters to edit). And most mindless typos in code will reveal themselves as errors (and if not, i.e. a missing semicolon after a class, which may trigger error messages that send new users barking up the wrong tree, then just leave a comment). | |
| Dec 14, 2013 at 9:49 | comment | added | Andrew Cheong | usually for the benefit of all. And if you don't? That is, if you come across that rare post that absolutely needs a few characters to change (and otherwise readers will be totally misled), but is otherwise perfect? Well, tough luck! You've been had! You've been took! You've been hoodwinked! Bamboozled! Led astray! Run amok! By the universe. And no >2K user finds it (or finds it important enough) to edit it? Sorry it happened to you, but personally, I still prefer the minimum to exist. | |
| Dec 14, 2013 at 9:48 | comment | added | Andrew Cheong | I'm surprised that the comments on this answer are almost exclusively negative. I think the motivation is that setting a minimum does more good by preventing a flow of extremely minor / pedantic edits (especially from new users), than it does evil by bothering users (who were already willing to click and punch a few buttons to edit) to find 1 or 2 more things to edit. I get that one character makes all the difference in code, but most edits are not of that nature, and even among the ones that are, we can almost always find something else to edit, in less than 15 seconds, and | |
| Dec 14, 2013 at 8:11 | comment | added | Anders Lindén | It is really annoying when you find that the only way of making a posting perfect is to change one letter, and you can't do it. "Play a trick and you can do your minor edit" is a rule that is hard to motivate. | |
| Aug 25, 2013 at 19:01 | comment | added | Arlie Stephens | sigh This is painful when someone whose first language is probably not English has given a good answer - except for confusing a pair of English homonymns, creating nonsense. "Exits" and "exists" in this case. Even with my proofreader's eagle eye, I only found one other similar mistake (its for it's IIRC) and had to change a perfectly valid word to a synonymn to increase my character count. Even with my explanation in the edit reason, reviewers are going to see the silly change first - the important typo was in the last line of the answer - and probably disallow the edit. sigh | |
| Aug 21, 2013 at 7:09 | comment | added | akostadinov | -1, sometimes there isn't | |
| Jul 24, 2013 at 13:27 | comment | added | Jocelyn | @OP: "Instead of tricking the rule, just look for other changes that can be made [...] there's often at least one other error to be found". -> That's simply not true. | |
| Dec 27, 2012 at 19:54 | comment | added | Austin Henley | I would argue against the "state of perfection." Perfection doesn't matter. Editing to that extent has diminishing returns. | |
| Aug 30, 2012 at 13:17 | comment | added | Vladislav | would be interesting to know how do you submit "improved" edit suggestion for this code: stackoverflow.com/a/8722074/155687 - there is ONLY ONE character to delete (mismatch in regex and error message) <asp:RegularExpressionValidator runat="server" ID="valInput" ControlToValidate="txtInput" ValidationExpression="^[\s\S]{0,100}$" ErrorMessage="Please enter a maximum of 1000 characters" Display="Dynamic">*</asp:RegularExpressionValidator> | |
| Aug 19, 2011 at 15:14 | comment | added | Edward Brey | Small changes can make the difference between correct and incorrect code. For example, this XAML here needs quotes to work: stackoverflow.com/questions/2948290/… I didn't see anything else to improve, but it would be a convenience to other people copying and pasting the code to try it out, if the code were correct. | |
| Jun 29, 2011 at 19:34 | comment | added | JSWork | @Kate Gregory: If I recall correctly it was more of a "try this solution" post. The solution was right, there was just a typo in one of the variable names in the form of an extra e. | |
| Jun 9, 2011 at 18:05 | comment | added | Kate Gregory | @JSWork if the posted code would not compile, surely that was the problem the asker was facing? See my answer below. | |
| May 27, 2011 at 21:22 | comment | added | endolith | @Grace: How do we "let a 2k user handle it" if they aren't aware of the problem? I thought the whole point of this limit was to prevent bothering 2k users who have to review every edit anyway. | |
| May 19, 2011 at 19:45 | comment | added | JSWork | As a new user I can say this limit is rather annoying. In StackOverflow I saw a code snippet where someone had an extra e in their code. All I wanted to do was remove the extra e so the code would compile. It would not let me change a reference of Neested to Nested to prevent a compile error. | |
| May 5, 2011 at 21:18 | comment | added | endolith | But what if there aren't any other changes to be made? The people who make up these rules don't seem to think them through before implementing them. | |
| Apr 27, 2011 at 16:52 | comment | added | Martin | I beg to disagree just because code snippets need spaces in front. So space only changes are not uncommon. In fact, you got it the wrong way around: When all you do is add spaces then then you can't do any evil with it. No 2k users needed. BTW: not knowing the background all i did make a useless 6 character change and a rant in the explanation. Now there will be some 2k users having fun now. | |
| Mar 3, 2011 at 16:05 | vote | accept | vbence | ||
| Mar 3, 2011 at 16:05 | comment | added | Piskvor left the building | @tvanfosson: Well, time for me to get some more rep then ;) It could have been me clicking "improve this edit" and triggering the 6-char edit limit there... | |
| Mar 3, 2011 at 15:15 | comment | added | tvanfosson | @Piskvor - I can confirm that the 6 character limit doesn't apply to 100K users. ;-) ok, technically, 133K users, but I doubt anyone would pick 133K as an arbitrary cutoff, maybe 128K, but not 133K. | |
| Mar 3, 2011 at 15:08 | comment | added | Grace Note StaffMod | @Piskvor Quite positive. Even if I didn't have first-hand experience of it, Jeff and waffles have stressed, multiple times, that if you find that rare instance that it's just a minor edit of under 6 characters, just let a 2k user handle it. Because 2k users don't need to bother 2 other users just to get their edit through. | |
| Mar 3, 2011 at 15:04 | comment | added | Piskvor left the building | Are you sure of "no limit over 2k"? I seem to be hitting the limit, even at 16k - but as it does prompt me to make other changes, it makes me realize that any edit should improve the post considerably, therefore I do more editing. | |
| Mar 3, 2011 at 14:43 | history | answered | Grace NoteStaffMod | CC BY-SA 2.5 |