Is Meta the right place to report typos on SO-family sites? I'm referring to bug reports like these:
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1Where else would they be appropriate?– WelbogCommented Jul 9, 2010 at 16:33
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5Typos, not. But you should report any plural mistake directly to Jeff.– GnoupiCommented Jul 9, 2010 at 16:55
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1 Answer
I don't see why not. We don't want the giants of Mispelheim to win the Grammarok, do we?
They're not exactly "bugs", but there's no where else to report these things - this is where the devs will be looking, after all. You could send emails or use flags, but I think posting on Meta is more appropriate.
More importantly, this allows them to be publicly declined in the scenarios where it isn't a "typo", and so we stop people from repeatedly pestering about it.
Even when it isn't declined, having it publicly reported means that we only need one report. If we handled it through emails/flags, then no one has any clue that it was reported by someone else - yielding filled inboxes and flag heaps as everyone who cares sends their information. At least on Meta, if we get a duplicate report, we can close it.
answered Jul 9, 2010 at 16:33
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"no where" instead of "nowhere"?! Clearly nothing you say has value! Seriously though, I did consider the multiple reports possibility. I think it's clear from the number of posts that show up on Meta that people aren't rushing to report typos. It's not like there are even that many typos in the first place.– PopsCommented Jul 9, 2010 at 16:58
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@Popular If there aren't that many typo reports, how are they cluttering up the place? Is it so problematic that we need to fragment the standard reporting methodology? Meta is "the place to bring up issues about Stack Overflow", is that not where one should go when there's an error in the interface? How are typos different than small CSS goofs that are equally ephemeral? Commented Jul 9, 2010 at 17:07
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@Grace, never let it be said that I consider this to be a
status-criticalissue. As for your first question, even one useless question in a sea of five million good questions is clutter in my book. For your last question, my initial reaction was that they're not really different and both should be disallowed. But I now think you are right, because the slippery slope would be worse than the clutter. I've deleted my opposing answer.– PopsCommented Jul 9, 2010 at 18:24 -
@Popular I didn't assume you meant it was critical, so I'm sorry for that implication. However, I don't think typo reports are "useless". Typos can be legitimate errors in the system, and can lead to a lot of confusion if they're big enough. Commented Jul 9, 2010 at 18:34
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@Grace, no worries, I was trying to be a bit lighter with that
status-criticalcomment and it didn't translate. I would like to clarify one thing: "What is a closed question?" will get visitors forever; "There's a typo on the badges page" becomes useless after, but only after, the typo is fixed.– PopsCommented Jul 9, 2010 at 18:58 -
1@Popular: Most bug reports become useless after the bug is fixed, but nevertheless the bugs should be reported. To de-clutter the site it might be useful to delete these bug/typo reports after the issue is fixed. Basically all
status-completedquestions are not longer relevant, but I think just deleting all of them would go too far. You just get this kind of "clutter" if you want to abuse Stack Exchange as a bug tracker.– sthCommented Jul 11, 2010 at 11:36 -
@sth, I disagree about bug reports in general being useless. They can be good reference material in a way that a simple typo fix can't.– PopsCommented Jul 11, 2010 at 18:28
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@Popular Today's recent fiasco explains that not all bug reports are something that really needs to be kept on the site post-fix. A related thing occurred when we had that massive migration issue with 18 users on one post, which spawned multiple questions all of which have since been deleted. So I think that while there's not necessarily value in keeping typo reports undeleted on the site post-fix, there's still better value in actually posting them on Meta instead of the alternatives. Commented Jul 12, 2010 at 18:44