27

The question "Does Stack Exchange Crawl Web Sites?" mentions:

all being planned at the moment, in a nutshell, community will add a "special comment" to the post asking the creator to fix it, it will also add it to a list in /review and we will remove one of the tabs ... also we will add a couple of badges to help drive the fixing

namely:

  • Adds a comment to the post asking the author to fix it
  • Adds the post (question or answer) to a special list on the /review tab

As I have documented in "How to reconcile the 5 edits limit with a large set of updates of one's old answers?", I have got 51 questions with a sudden case of massive "link rot".
And I am unable to fix those more than 5 a day (often less, because I also edit other older answers of mine)

Going to a edit review process seems too cumbersome, especially when:

  • the edit is not just about fixing the link (but also the content of the answer to match the new evolutions behind the new link)
  • the topic is not a popular one (where many specialists are on the site, aware of the edit review queue, and willing to review anything)

Basically, I would like to fix the links, fix the content, save and see the result (visible by all) immediately.
Without any "edit limit per day". ("Cumbersome level": 0)

Would you consider given the possibility, for a trusted user, to edit said old post without the "5 edits per day" limit if the community user has commented, because of link rot, on said answer, requested for an edit?

To be clear: the fact that a new mechanism (to fight "link rot") might be put in place prompted this question, since said mechanism seems incompatible with the current "5 Edit limit per day" (as illustrated by my previous question).

I would request for a user with more than 20K rep to be able to edit without limit any answers of his "tagged" (commented) by "community" as containing a broken link to be fixed.

Improve this question
5
  • It might just be the shock of flipping to night shift, but how is this different from your previous question? Wouldn't this question just add to the previous one?
    – user7116
    Commented Apr 27, 2012 at 7:14
  • @sixlettervariables it is different because this one ask for unlimited edit in the specific context of a community comment asking for an edit because of link rot: no unlimited edit otherwise. That "community comment requesting for edit" is the new information which prompted the new question. The old one is for explaining the source of the problem.
    – VonC
    Commented Apr 27, 2012 at 7:21
  • So this is a feature-request rather than a discussion? If it is a discussion, it should just be rolled into the previous question.
    – user7116
    Commented Apr 27, 2012 at 7:23
  • @sixlettervariables ok. Edited.
    – VonC
    Commented Apr 27, 2012 at 7:28
  • @Chichiray yes, but with only 300 rep on SO, you don't have much right anyway. Wait... what is that 'K' after the '300'? ;)
    – VonC
    Commented Aug 8, 2012 at 7:42

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
10
+500

Starting with the next build, we'll be relaxing this throttle for established users.

Broadly speaking, the higher your reputation the more edits you'll be able to make before running into this anti-vandalization cutoff. Past a certain point, the limit will be removed altogether.

A flag may still be raised to call someone in to look at an unusually long run of edits in a given day, even when the limit is gone entirely.

Improve this answer
4
  • Thanks for this; seeing, groaning at and dismissing auto-flags on posts from established users was getting old. (At one point in time I even helped some users with whatever it was they were doing to their posts, like removing thanks/regards from their answers.)
    – BoltClock's a Unicorn Mod
    Commented Mar 14, 2013 at 22:41
  • Kevin, thank you so much.
    – user138231
    Commented Mar 15, 2013 at 0:18
  • 4
    Thank you very much, Kevin. A few more weeks, and Chichiray would have run out of rep for those bounties ;)
    – VonC
    Commented Mar 15, 2013 at 6:16
  • @Kevin Are you sure the edit limit was actually "relaxed" though? I still see an "edit limit" message: see meta.stackexchange.com/questions/195246/…
    – VonC
    Commented Aug 30, 2013 at 13:12
2

One way to address this issue is to identify "edits by original responder that only update links" and exclude them from the edit limit.

A possible mechanism to track this would be to store links in a separate table from the text of a post, so that the edit limit would only be decremented if the text of a post changed. (I don't know how much effort this would be to implement, as I don't know the physical data structure, but perhaps this will provoke thought amongst those who do.)

Improve this answer
0

For the sake of another alternative, it would also be possible to change the behavior of the link rot checker to at least not produce this annoying situation.

In order of least sophistication/presumed difficulty to implement:

  • The link rot checker could leave no more than $edit_limit (5) comments per user per day.
  • The checker could leave no more than $remaining_edits (5 minus the number of edits already made that day) per user per day.
  • The checker could leave no more than $edit_limit comments per user at any time.
  • Combining the above two, the checker could maintain an intelligent per-user queue so that each user would only ever have as many posts flagged as rotted as they had edits available.

The commonality between all of these lies in avoiding telling the user to do something they can't, by shifting the burden of remembering which posts need fixing from the user to the link rot checker.

As should be clear, this would likely be a significant increase in complexity for the checker. Simply allowing a checker-driven exception to the (already questionable) edit limit is almost certainly a simpler and more efficient solution.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .