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What do these mean here on meta?

Measured for a square, the carpenter spent the next quarter hour jamming the slide in and again, for the measured was twice before cut, but the house itself, that little slot, was anything but flush.

This is an edit summary of a very unpopular and hated question. I asked for its meaning in a (now deleted) comment. Then, Shog9 told me this:

Looks descriptive enough to me, but if you have questions about it you could post a separate topic I suppose, @Victor – Shog9♦ 21 mins ago

I replied:

@Shog9 I really really don't understand how this could be descriptive. I couldn't make any sense of it. But I won't post a separate topic, because I don't need to get a lot of DVs and CVs just for not understanding anything about what the hell that was supposed to mean. – Victor 15 mins ago

And he finally told this:

Folks rarely downvote honest questions, @Victor. Just focus on what is confusing for you and let someone explain it & you'll be fine. – Shog9♦ 13 mins ago

I don't have any clue of what this means, I don't know if it is good or bad, if it positive or negative, if it is a critique, an observation, a meme or whatever. I even google'd it and found nothing. I even don't know why this is on-topic here because I don't know what that means. But after the comments above, and I don't think that Shog9 would be trolling me, then here it is.

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  • Looks descriptive enough to me, actually...
    – John Dvorak
    Jan 8, 2015 at 4:54
  • @JanDvorak Then, what is that? Go on, post an answer.
    – Victor Stafusa - BozoNaCadeia
    Jan 8, 2015 at 4:56
  • I read that as "I realise I probably just spent way more time fixing that question than I should have... but the title sucked."
    – John Dvorak
    Jan 8, 2015 at 4:57
  • @InfiniteRecursion Thank you for "told". English is not my first language.
    – Victor Stafusa - BozoNaCadeia
    Jan 8, 2015 at 5:30
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    I must have a poetry handicap. I don't understand any of the poetic edit summaries.
    – ff524
    Jan 8, 2015 at 6:11
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    @ff524The edit summary mentioned here means that a carpenter spent hours refining something was unworthy of repair. The author of that post had done several edits over several hours, you can judge for yourself if all the refining by the author(carpenter) improved the quality of the post(house).
    – Infinite Recursion
    Jan 8, 2015 at 6:43
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    @Infinite Thanks, after reading the answers here I understood this one. I meant that generally speaking, I don't understand these poetic edit summaries.
    – ff524
    Jan 8, 2015 at 6:47
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    Toothsome though the mongrels be, it is the forest that makes the curve straight. I'd suggest you hone your shears in preparation for the solstice eve, lest your eyes fail to shine.
    – user1228
    Jan 8, 2015 at 15:47
  • @ff524 Start with the shorter ones (with explanations) on SuperUser in order to understand the poetry.
    – Infinite Recursion
    Jan 9, 2015 at 18:44

2 Answers 2

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Random adds poetic pieces as edit summaries, this is another one of random's poetry.

and I don't think that Shog9 would be trolling me

Really? :D

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  • Well in this case I would say that he is misusing edit summaries. Since they should contain clear information about the edit, not confusing poetic pieces. EDIT - I really took him seriously and did exactly what he suggested me to do.
    – Victor Stafusa - BozoNaCadeia
    Jan 8, 2015 at 5:04
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    As Shog mentioned, the summaries are poetic, but meaningful. It isn't a misuse, it is an artistic way of writing @Victor.
    – Infinite Recursion
    Jan 8, 2015 at 5:14
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As Inf notes, the editor at work here has a way with words which is well-known around these parts. Some of us, upon tiring of interpreting terse insults on the Twitterbooks, will relax by reading such soothing summaries.

But, fanciful though they may be, they are not without meaning or relevance...

Note that this is the 6th revision of the post; four previous edits had been made since it was posted, all of them by the original author himself. The efforts were futile, however; no frustrated addendum nor bold heading could fix the underlying problems that had damned that question from the start.

So even as our intrepid editor strove to summarize the question and clean up some of the rougher edges, he recognized that repair was out of the question.

That's what I read, and as I said, descriptive indeed it seemed. But perhaps other meanings were meant or seen, and if you find it confusing or odd then perhaps it was intended more for the original author than for you.

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    I found it so confusing that it looked like random generated machine text for me. Never saw a behavior like that before and I think that this is a severe misuse of the edit summary, since I thought that they were focused to the community, like the edit summaries in wikipedia.
    – Victor Stafusa - BozoNaCadeia
    Jan 8, 2015 at 5:14
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    @Victor since they're focused to the community... success? Better than the autogenerated text most people leave.
    – John Dvorak
    Jan 8, 2015 at 5:16
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    Depends on the context, Victor, and the editor - many do not leave summaries at all, in which case the system dutifully records the characters changed. Sometimes it is beneficial to explain the edit for posterity, other times it makes more sense to address the owner of the post. Occasionally, one might want to address a previous editor...
    – Shog9
    Jan 8, 2015 at 5:17
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    @Victor Just that you haven't seen it before doesn't mean it is misuse. Offenses refers to unhelpful and purposefully destructive actions done without good faith, this is not one. The edit comment was fine as is and descriptive enough for most, if not all. And for the edit itself, was exemplary. I find the edit summaries made by the editor extremely insightful and inspirational, for one.
    – Unihedron
    Jan 8, 2015 at 5:17
  • @Unihedro I am not saying that it is offensive. And I am saying nothing about the edit itself, just about the edit summary. I just saying that it was so confusing that here is the result, an entire question just to get some explanation of that.
    – Victor Stafusa - BozoNaCadeia
    Jan 8, 2015 at 5:20
  • @Victor ... What?
    – Unihedron
    Jan 8, 2015 at 5:20
  • Now the confusion is cleared, so let it go @Victor. The conversation was about a certain edit summary, let's focus on that.
    – Infinite Recursion
    Jan 8, 2015 at 5:23
  • I'm not unhappy with the outcome. This question was a lot more fun than the last one.
    – Shog9
    Jan 8, 2015 at 5:23
  • @Unihedro You telled me that this is not an offense, and I never said that. You said "the edit itself, was exemplary", and I have no question about this. My question was solely about the edit summary that it looked extremely obscure for me.
    – Victor Stafusa - BozoNaCadeia
    Jan 8, 2015 at 5:23
  • And he thinks you weren't trolling him @Shog, how naive!
    – Infinite Recursion
    Jan 8, 2015 at 5:25
  • Since when is offering to let someone ask a question trolling, @Inf? I even answered... Perhaps Victor will even have a better impression of meta-folk after this.
    – Shog9
    Jan 8, 2015 at 5:29
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    I come to MSE for answers about timezones and I get poetry instead.
    – Jon Ericson
    Jan 8, 2015 at 5:30
  • I agree Shog, my bad.
    – Infinite Recursion
    Jan 8, 2015 at 5:42
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    "perhaps it was intended more for the original author" - well, I'm the original author and I couldn't make head or tail of it either!
    – Rand al'Thor
    Jan 8, 2015 at 10:36

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