I imagine a scenario where the original poster is compelled to roll back multiple edits to his post, causing it to become a community wiki, thereby losing any future rep points from that post.
Can this happen presently?
Should this happen?
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Yes, rollbacks count as edits. But you can roll back multiple changes with a single edit. It's very unlikely that you're going to hit 20+ edits this way, thus it seems unlikely you'll be community wiki-fied.– Cody GrayCommented Apr 30, 2011 at 8:08
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3@Cody it takes 20 edits? I thought it was ten. I often end up making about half a dozen edits on my own and I could see getting pushed to 10, but I guess 20 would take a real edit war, and moderator action would be likely. By the way, why not post that as an answer?– Mr.WizardCommented Apr 30, 2011 at 8:12
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@Cody, this FAQ question says: "The post has been edited ten (10) times by the original owner." Has that changed?– Mr.WizardCommented Apr 30, 2011 at 8:15
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That's why I didn't post it as an answer. I wasn't really sure, just guessing. I've never had a question or answer become community wiki automatically, so I have no idea. The point was that this problem seems quite unlikely.– Cody GrayCommented Apr 30, 2011 at 8:15
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3 Answers
Rollbacks do not currently count at all towards pushing a post to Community Wiki. This was tested way back in August 2010 and still holds true today. They certainly count as edits for the purpose of existing in the post's revision history, no matter how many you make, but for the intent of converting a post to Community Wiki, it is as if they never existed.
Revived the tests today just to confirm that nothing changed. And indeed, nothing changed. Thresholds still are the same, and the post remains completely unconverted no matter how many rollbacks happen.
As for whether or not they should, I'm fine with the status quo mostly from the perspective of "Don't need to fix what isn't broken" - it's been this way since the dawn of the system and there's been no widespread inclination to abuse it. Abusive use would thus be the outlier in the statistics and so that should be the "exception" that is handled by moderator intervention.
answered Jan 30, 2013 at 17:58
Yes, rollbacks will count as an edit, and add to the total required to auto-convert to Community Wiki.
I don't think they should work that way, but that's present behavior.
answered Jun 23, 2011 at 15:50
Yes rollbacks count as an edit.
Yes, it's important for it to stay this way. One of the main reasons for CW-ing a post that has been edited a lot is because editing a post bumps it to the top of the "active" list. Some people try to edit their own post a lot with trivial edits to keep it at the top of the list (to try to get more upvotes). If a rollback didn't count towards that then a user would be able to keep rolling back their post between two previous versions to bump it indefinitely without it ever becoming CW.
If a post of yours becomes CW as a result of a number of improper edits from other users, flag the post for moderator attention, explain that it became CW because of the inappropriate edits of others, and they may decide to un-CW the post (they can do that).
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1I hadn't considered that at the time I wrote this question. +1 Commented Jan 24, 2013 at 15:34
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1Funny story about that - said window of opportunity does exist. Thing is that unlike editing in minor fixes, rolling back to bump is... extremely obvious that it is being done for such. So they don't go under the radar (especially since the whole point is to be detected), which in turn means that they can be handled appropriately when abused as such. Commented Jan 30, 2013 at 18:11
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"then a user would be able to keep rolling back their post between two previous versions" does not make sense. One would be a roll back. The other would be a roll forward. ...so no, roll-backs should not be counted, even if roll-forwards should.– A.M.Commented Jul 16, 2013 at 18:18
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@A.M. If you have one change, that leaves you with revision one and revision two. If you roll it back there is now a revision three, which happens to be identical to revision one. You can then roll that back to revision two, for the fourth revision. Rolling back doesn't delete all revision after whatever revision you've chosen, it simply adds a new revision. There is no concept of "rolling forward".– ServyCommented Jul 17, 2013 at 3:39
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@A.M. Why? What would be gained from doing that? Also, feel free to propose that as a feature request if you're prepared to justify how implementing it is going to be worthwhile; personally I see almost nothing to get and lots to lose from such a change.– ServyCommented Jul 17, 2013 at 3:55
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@Servy Since rollbacks do not count towards making a community wiki this is moot, and things are best as-is, but I was simply saying: If people abusing unlimited 'free' edits in the way you pointed out is ever a big problem, then one solution (better than the auto-wiki solution, I say) lies in your wording of the problem. With each edit associated with a given time, you can distinguish between roll-backs and "roll-forwards" and allow the original poster to do 'free' roll-backs, since there is a legitimate use-case for that, but not 'free' roll-forwards.– A.M.Commented Jul 17, 2013 at 13:18