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On a recent post, the revision history states:

Post Made Community Wiki by question having more than 30 answers

Now, I totally understand why it was made wiki, and realize that it now has over 30 answers, but it didn't at the time. From what I can tell, it was made CW when it was turned into a contest (for obvious reasons).

Is the note one of several default options, chosen because it was expected to get many answers? Normally when I see posts turned wiki for reasons like this, it's just given as [made Community Wiki] in the edit notes or something similar.

Just curious why the message isn't consistent with the timeline.

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For some reason this "bug" is quite known behavior that was never fixed. Basically, the community wiki reason is calculated on the fly, not stored with the post. A user always causes the community wiki to occur, even for 30 answers (the person who posted the 30th answer) and edits (the person who made the edit that cause wikification). The system only looks at the additional criteria after the fact.

So whenever a question is community wiki and has more than 30 answers, the system will always list the reason as having had more than 30 answers, whether that was the actual cause of the wikification or not. Not ideal behavior, and I don't know what SE's official stance is on whether they want to fix it or not. Honestly, if they're not going to better maintain what caused the wikification, I'd rather just go back to the "made community wiki by user" and not have the other reasons at all.

Similarly, if the question was converted to wiki by having 30 answers and drops back below the 30 mark, the reason disappears and it shows the user who originally posted that 30th answer as having converted the question and its answers to community wiki.

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  • Most likely Tim Post made it CW. Going to ask. Commented Nov 21, 2013 at 19:13
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    He did. I remember seeing his name on the note before it reached 30 answers.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Nov 21, 2013 at 19:14
  • That's a full scale bug then, in my humble opinion. Was it reported before? Commented Nov 21, 2013 at 19:17
  • Ah, that makes sense. The cause that is, not the effect
    – Geobits
    Commented Nov 21, 2013 at 19:17
  • @ShaWizDowArd I only know about it because I had reported it in the Teacher's Lounge (I believe) and a Community Manager explained it to me. There are other posts about it floating around but I don't remember them.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Nov 21, 2013 at 19:18
  • "So whenever a question is community wiki and has more than 30 answers, the system will always list the reason as having had more than 30 answers" -- I don't think so. At least, not always. See comments here. (Ah, or maybe you're right: those Super User examples are border cases, due to deleted answers. The threshold is 15 on Super User, by the way.)
    – Arjan
    Commented Nov 21, 2013 at 19:45
  • Today, it failed on all (now: 6) answers on a CW question, where in each answer the author of that very answer is shown in "Post Made Community Wiki by ..." Curious what will happen once that question reaches 30 answers.
    – Arjan
    Commented Dec 26, 2013 at 15:56
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Is the note one of several default options, chosen because it was expected to get many answers?

No, it usually says "Made Community Wiki by [username]"

I think the 30-answers trigger for autowikifying may have overwrote the previous revision history.

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