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In the last time I've been doing cleanup and my 'normal' retagging and editing on SO and SU, but sometimes I run into someone who's rolling back my changes.

For example this question on SU, I removed the tags because they add (in my opinion) nothing to the question, but as it seems that's not so obvious as I thought. So, should I basically explain the reasons for the edit in the summary/comments (which I didn't do in this case, yes *ashamed*), edit it again maybe with further explanations and after that flag for Moderator Attention? Or does the author has some kind of 'domestic authority' right on his question/answer?

What's the right thing to do?

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  • I wouldn't have removed download-manager. Good call on the rest.
    – badp
    Commented Sep 10, 2010 at 10:29
  • 1
    see also: Put an end to rollback wars
    – gnat
    Commented Feb 23, 2014 at 12:05

1 Answer 1

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Definitely explain your edits, it will help avoid a lot of confusion. Despite the cc-wiki rights and the note in the FAQ people do get defensive about their posts.

However, I don't usually check back on posts I've edited so I don't see if anyone has rolled back.

So I'd just walk away, after all rolling back a roll back is often going to start the edit war, thus avoiding the problem all together.

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    I, too, never defend a roll-ed back edit (I sometimes notice) to avoid conflict. If the roll back is in error, someone else will reinstall the changes soon enough.
    – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten
    Commented Sep 10, 2010 at 18:31
  • in cases when rolling-back edits look particularly troublesome, it makes sense to flag the post for moderator attention, explaining in the flag message what feels wrong (if there's too much details, flag message may in turn refer to chat or meta for further discussion:)
    – gnat
    Commented Feb 23, 2014 at 8:18

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