52

I recently answered this question.

The OP made so many edits before I supplied my answer that the question was made CW. As a result my answer also became community wiki.

I don't see any benefit to this feature and it just disincentivises providing answers to such questions. Can this feature be removed?

Epilogue

BTW: I did flag this answer at the time just to see what the response would be.

Can I get this answer un community wikified? The OP managed to make the question CW by dint of editing it multiple times but I don't see why my answer should be automatically penalized

And received the response

declined - a moderator reviewed your flag, but found no evidence to support it.

The answer in question only ever received a single upvote anyway so the effect on rep is negligible but the experience now makes me extremely unlikely to provide answers to such questions unless they happened to also be outstandingly good questions.

Update 2

I wasn't actually sure whether there was some technical reason why removing the CW on questions would be more troublesome than doing so on answers.

But I happened to notice the same thing occurred today on this meta question and the auto wiki was successfully removed so that doesn't appear to be a barrier.

Improve this question
13
  • 20
    I think more than a handful of us hate auto-wiki...
    – Mysticial
    Commented Nov 14, 2012 at 10:02
  • 2
    That question bears so little relation to the original it's ridiculous. The OP has been using it like a gasp forum.
    – ben is uǝq backwards
    Commented Nov 14, 2012 at 10:16
  • Do you want to remove auto-wikification entirely, or just change it so that it won't affect answers to a converted question?
    – Mad Scientist
    Commented Nov 14, 2012 at 10:39
  • @MadScientist - This feature request is to change it so that it won't affect answers to a converted question. I wouldn't be averse to removing it entirely but I see that it does have some value in preventing people abusing the system by continually bumping their question. Not sure how that could be prevented otherwise. maybe a rep penalty for every edit after some threshold.
    – Martin Smith
    Commented Nov 14, 2012 at 10:42
  • 10
    I think auto-wiki should be completely removed. From what I've seen, there are many many many more false positives than actual cases of abuse. I've seen far too many great posts fall victim to auto-wiki. If there is abusive-bumping, someone will see it and flag it. If anything just replace auto-wiki with auto-flags.
    – Mysticial
    Commented Nov 14, 2012 at 10:43
  • 5
    @Mysticial: Good idea. We're already alerted to users hitting the daily edit rate limit by auto-flags, so I don't see any harm in using auto-flags for too many edits on the same post as well.
    – BoltClock's a Unicorn Mod
    Commented Nov 14, 2012 at 12:23
  • If you're here only for the rep maybe it's not the place for you. It should be a nice bonus, not the sole purpose that you post.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Jun 11, 2013 at 13:44
  • 2
    @ShaWizDowArd - I'm not here only for the rep and I already stated that if the question was particularly interesting I might make an exception. Fairly frequently I hit the rep cap anyway and it would make no practical difference. Just if the site is to be gamified I want the rules to be fair and make sense. I doubt that I am the only person who regards it as a disincentive and may move onto another question. Pretending otherwise is disingenuous. This is a real negative consequence of the current policy.
    – Martin Smith
    Commented Jun 11, 2013 at 13:57
  • 1
    @Martin I would consider this as very minor nuisance especially having more than enough rep already. Your sentence "but the experience now makes me extremely unlikely to provide answers to such questions" triggered my original comment here.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Jun 11, 2013 at 13:59
  • @ShaWizDowArd - I knew someone would comment on that!
    – Martin Smith
    Commented Jun 11, 2013 at 14:01
  • 1
    As posted in a similar thread, the cure (auto-wiki) is worse than the disease (too much bumping). We should either get to the root of the problem and stop having things be bumped by the 3rd etc. edit of the day (then auto-wiki by owner's edits alone can go away), or we should make auto-wiki reversible by the questioner with no great hoops to jump through (i.e. "but found no evidence to support it" should not be a reason not to do it. The burden of evidence should lie with keeping it wiki!)
    – A.M.
    Commented Jul 4, 2013 at 23:24
  • 1
    FWIW at the question you recently referred, it looks like mod manually removed CW separately from question (meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/215664/revisions) and from the answer (meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/215666/revisions)
    – gnat
    Commented Jan 10, 2014 at 22:54
  • @gnat - Ah, thanks, so it is slightly more work then.
    – Martin Smith
    Commented Jan 10, 2014 at 22:56

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
6

We took a bit of an alternate route here. Rather than changing how answer conversion works, we instead changed it so that posts are no longer converted automatically to community wiki for any reason. As such, if a post receives too many edits, then that won't affect your answer by proxy.

The only way for a question to become community wiki, going forward, is by a moderator specifically converting it so. The instances for this should be exceedingly rare, and in general something reached by community consensus on the site's meta. The conversion of attached answers will persist, but the permanence of this status should be handled in such communications.

Improve this answer
1
  • Excellent idea!
    – Martin Smith
    Commented Apr 9, 2014 at 21:34

You must log in to answer this question.

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