Editing Philosophy

Question

Just read a couple MSO posts about editing guidelines, after seeing my edit getting rejected.

I had stumbled upon an old question that somehow made it onto the front page, and saw a great answer there. The question was about "understanding events and event handlers in C#", and the answer was great but there was further information in the comments.

So I started editing the post; I found that "if we create a delegate void MyDelegate(object sender, EventArgs e)" was clearer if the backtick encompassed the delegate word, so I moved it.

A commenter was asking "How is the event fired?", and the answerer replied with a comment instead of editing his answer, so I added a code snippet to give an example of how the event would be fired.

Then I noticed the code block actually included two parts that really belonged in two separate classes (the one where the event is created, and the one where the event is registered/handled), so I split the definition and the consumption of the event into two code blocks. That made it much clearer what belonged where, even though there weren't any classes involved (didn't add any).

And then I added the part why I actually wanted to edit the post in the first place: I added the shorthand notation for registering events: myObj.SomethingHappened += HandleSomethingHappened;. I left the full notation in place.

And lastly I added a line of code to show how a handler could be unregistered with -=.

As the first reviewer approved the edit, I thought to myself "hmm this last paragraph I added to introduce the -= really just restates the previous one from the original author" - shortly after that, my edit was rejected by 3 reviewers in a row.

The reason was "This edit is incorrect or an attempt to reply to or comment on the existing post." -- really? Is this how constructive edits are being welcomed? Have I introduced bad code that's just plain wrong? I mean, I use the shorthand notation all the time, I know it's correct. The -= part was just added for the sake of completeness, and the backtick would have been too minor of an edit. Reordering the code snippets and splitting them in two distinct blocks really improves the post I find, but someone who just glanced at the diff could think I removed the event handler snippet, when I merely cut it & pasted it below the event registration code.

So I'm guessing the redundant paragraph killed it? Should I submit another edit, minus that paragraph? Actually I don't even care, it's a question from 2009 with almost 60K views and the answer is great enough as it is to have received 155 upvotes (plus mine), and if people don't know they don't need to new up the delegate to register the event then they can just buy ReSharper and have the tool teach them it's redundant. And if they want to unregister a handler then they can certainly find how to do that somewhere else. And maybe I should be doing something else to kill my spare time than browsing SO and upvoting good questions and answers, downvoting and flagging bad ones, and improve the few posts I can contribute to with the few things I do know. I mean, I intended to genuinely improve an excellent post, it's a bit (quite) irritating to read it's an "incorrect" edit.

I take the [Reject] edits that change an answer's explanation or code, with a supposedly "better" alternative. Even if the proposed solution is better, it should be added as a comment, or a separate answer. guideline as what caused my edit to be rejected. Point is, I was adding information to the answer, not changing or replacing anything.

So, was this edit legit? If I understand this MSO answer correctly, my edit should have been rejected for changing too much of the post, not for being incorrect or an attempt to comment on the answer. And if Servy's MSO answer is still right, it means I should have posted my content as a brand new answer... to a question that's like 4 years old? Just did that, but I find it would have been better to just edit the post, given that "Edits are expected to be substantial and to leave the post better than you found it."

Sorry for the long post.

Answer 1

A friend of mine, professional tech writer, once told me that one of the major skills in this profession is to remain anonymous.

He explained that it means that to readers (including original author of the edited content), it shouldn't look like you added something of "your own", that it shouldn't look like you introduced something that wasn't there in the mind of original author.

As opposed to say, Wikipedia, Stack Exchange posts are attributed to users, their profiles and avatars are typically displayed under the posts.

This makes me feel like a technical editor when I make changes, which in turn makes me recall what I've been taught, makes me feel that it's appropriate to "remain anonymous" in the sense explained above.

As far as I can tell, your edit somehow leaks your personality (your ideas and opinions) into the original post. I would not do that.

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Please don't get me wrong, this is not about being somehow... shy when editing - quite opposite, I firmly believe ^{1, 2, 3} that one should feel completely free to edit and the more, the better.

Neither this is about amount / size of content to add - I for one ^{1, 2} never feel anyhow obliged to correlate size of my edits with that of the original post in any way.

Nor this is about limiting self in making justified cuts to original text - I cut without mercy ¹ when I can justify (preferably, in the edit summary) my cut to anyone, including original author.

The only thing I am trying to avoid at any cost is to make an impression that I added something, anything, that can not be inferred from original post. When I feel the need for something like this, I do anything but edits: clarifying things in comments, writing my own answer, flagging, whatever.

• ^{Did I mention that from above perspective, it doesn't really matter whether one suggests the edits through review or does free editing? No matter if one goes through review or edits at their own discretion, I expect them to "remain anonymous"... and when I feel that edit went too far off from that, I tend to rollback or flag for mod attention.}