Add the ability to lock a question against edits

Question

(Similar to Give Diamond Moderators the Ability to Partially Lock a Post)

It would be nice if diamond mods could have the ability to prevent edits on a question/answer.

For example, the famous Regex match open tags answer has been (in the not recent past) defaced by a user who decided it was inappropriate. Recently, the answer has shown up in the mod queue as flagged for the same reason.

I'd like to prevent someone from editing the answer (it is perfect), but locking it prevents people from upvoting.

The option to "prevent edits" would be nice. Not only in this instance, but also in instances where edit wars are going on over a question/answer.

Answer 1

This is already declined, but someone bountied it anyway. Tempted to add status-extra-crispy-declined... But that's too long.

So, I'll just quote this:

Comment locks make sense for short periods of time. Anything more severe should require the entire post to be locked. In particular locking edits while still allowing voting and commenting falls somewhere between idealistic and sadistic.

If you're gonna still allow voting, you have to allow editing. I'm not wild about the idea of allowing a post to be answered, closed or commented on without the ability to edit it either. What you're really looking for is some sort of edit-suspension that could be applied to an abusive editor, which I'm a little bit sympathetic to but tend to agree is overkill in the vast majority of cases.

If someone is making abusive edits, tell them to stop. If they don't listen, suspend them until such a time as they agree to stop - then unsuspend them. P.S.: just because you don't like an edit doesn't mean it's abuse.

If multiple people are making abusive edits, then take a good hard look at the post being edited: perhaps there's a serious problem with it that folks are trying (and failing) to address. If possible, fix it; if not, lock it until someone else figures out how to fix it.

And let's face it: as funny (and occasionally poignant) as that Regex post is, it's not really a great breeding ground for generally-useful features.

Answer 2

Interesting, but...right now a post can be

[owned | community-wiki] x [open | closed | deleted] x [normal | protected | locked]

If we keep adding choices the state space is going to start to look like the infamous facebook privacy settings...

Answer 3

I'd like to prevent someone from editing the answer (it is perfect), but locking it prevents people from upvoting.

It prevents people from down-voting too. So what? Why do you think folks abusing one form of interaction wouldn't just move on to the next?

You see a post as an important part of SO, too valuable to be exposed to the normal interactions of other users? Then lock it. Preserve it as a show-piece, with no change to content, score, or comments. When things quiet down, unlock it again.

More importantly, have you warned the user who edited the question that he crossed a line?

_{You can't solve social problems with technical solutions. Because social problems can't be solved with technical solutions. As I have answered in social-and-tech questions here so many times before, the use of technical solutions will not allow you to solve social problems...}

Answer 4

It might also be useful for ♦ mods to be able to protect a post from spam/offensive flags, as these are sometimes abused to punish a user (although this is pretty rare).

Answer 5

This post should be locked, period -- I think 3k+ upvotes is plenty, don't you?

Answer 6

There is a review queue that an edit needs to go through. This queue, in theory, should prevent vandalism from occurring.

If vandalism does occur, either because it somehow snuck through the queue or because it was introduced by someone with > 2K rep (and, thus, the edit didn't need to be reviewed), it should be flagged so a moderator can look at it and act accordingly. If someone with > 2K rep is abusing their priviledges, I'm sure those priviledges will be at least temporarily revoked.