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paulusm
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Why are questions edited more thoroughly than answers?

I used the PostHistory table and ran a Python diff ratio using the first and last edits for both questions and answers. This is supposed to give 1 if the posts are identical and 0 if there are no similarities found.

The mean diff for questions was 0.92, whereas for answers it was 0.94 (they are both close to 1 as many posts are not edited). Moreover 35% of questions have been edited compared to only 20% of answers.

The shape of editing is different between the two, however, with questions getting more smaller edits than answers (questions in red, answers blue dashed):

density plots of questions (red) and answer (blue dashed) diffs below 1

I'm interested in the differences in edits between questions and answers

Disclosure: This is part of my PhD research — answers or useful comments will be acknowledged.

paulusm
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