Well, I wasn't here at the time, but from what I understand, suggested edits are a relatively new feature. Before that, people would use Community Wiki to designate posts to be edited easily by low-rep users.
Today however, with suggested edits, virtually anyone can edit any post, given his edit is valuable enough to be peer-approved.
In my eyes, Community Wiki is at best unnecessary, at worse, annoying.
Unnecessary
As stated, any user, regardless of reputation limit can edit any post, given his edit was of high enough quality. This renders the Community Wiki system rather useless.
Annoying
If I asked a very high traffic question, which generated a lot of (crap) answers, the post would immediately become community wiki! I will no longer gain reputation from my supposedly good question, and furthermore! There's nothing the mods could do. Because even if they remove the CW state from the question:
- I wouldn't get any "lost" reputation back.
- If someone else decides to add his own answer on to of the existing 30+, the CW state would pop right back in.
Moreover!
The current trend I see, someone asking a crap question posts a crap post, he knows it's a crap post, and marks it as community wiki to avoid the heat.
So here's my insight. I suggest to eliminate the CW ability from users. Perhaps keep it for mods for special cases, and make it available through flags. Also, remove the automatic CW state from (at least) high profile questions. (No one edited my question, definitely it wasn't a "collaborative effort" to write it. Why should it be CW?). I think from highly edited posts as well.
Your thoughts?
I would like the community-wiki status of this question removed. It doesn't deserve it, and doesn't need "community effort". Thank you.
– Sep 18 at 7:50 declined - The CW status is as a result of there being > 15 answers. Even if we switched it back it would convert again when another answer was added. – Madara's Ghost Dec 9 '12 at 9:48