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I wanted to change tags in the following question from to something more reasonable: Please solve the following Algebra. This question was migrated from MO and it was closed on MSE as "unclear what you're asking".

(I was thinking . Perhaps also , although I am not sure about this one. Other improvements of that post are possible, too: TeX-ifying the question, adding more descriptive title. But the the most important reason for editing is, in my opinion, that we do not want questions tagged , if there are other reasonable tags for the question. Of course, since the question is closed and has a negative score, it might get deleted after some time automatically. But I do not see any reason to wait, if there are more appropriate tags.)

Anyway when I clicked on "edit tags" and changed the tags, after clicking on "Save Tag Edits" I have received an error saying: This question cannot be edited at this time.

Only after this I have noticed that "edit" is inactive - it is not possible to click on it; so the question probably cannot be edited.

I wonder:

  • Why cannot be this question edited?
  • If there is a reason this question should not be editable, shouldn't the "edit tags" be inactive, too?

Here are the screenshots?

Screenshot: tag edit

Screenshot: edit is inactive

I am tagging this as , since either the question should be editable (so it is a bug) or, if the question should not be editable, the possibility to edit tags should not be available either (in which case it is also a bug, albeit a very minor one).

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  • $\begingroup$ To be honest, I am also a little confused about the migration of this question. I thought that if a question is migrated and then closed on the target site, then the migrated question bounces back to the original site. If this is the case, why the question is still on MSE? $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Jan 15, 2014 at 8:32
  • $\begingroup$ @Sklivvz I see that you have removed the bug tag. Should I repost at least the fact that in locked questions it is possible to click on "edit tags" as a separate bug-report on meta.SO? $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Jan 15, 2014 at 11:09
  • $\begingroup$ Oh, I did that mistakenly, but it doesn't matter anyways as we are fixing this bug this week. I am sure it has been reported on meta already. $\endgroup$
    – Sklivvz
    Jan 15, 2014 at 11:23
  • $\begingroup$ @Sklivvz Ok, since you say that this is going to be fixed, it probably does not make much sense posting it on meta.SO. (I will check after 2 or 3 weeks, if the behavior is still the same, I will search whether it was reported already and if I do not find anything, I will post there.) Thanks for letting me know that this is going to be fixed. $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Jan 15, 2014 at 11:27
  • $\begingroup$ @Sklivvz I have made a post on meta.SO. $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Jan 29, 2014 at 12:51
  • $\begingroup$ I will just add as a comment to the recent retagging, that the software has changed since this question. The screenshots show that the problem existed at the time, but at the moment the inline tag editing is not available for the locked posts. (At least the ones that I tried.) Maybe this question still has some archival value, despite the fact that the problem no longer exists.) $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Jun 19, 2020 at 2:06

1 Answer 1

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The post is locked which also prevents editing. This is by design and not a bug.

The post is locked because it was closed after being migrated. Closing the question rejects the migration and locks the post. While this can be somewhat annoying, all other possible options to deal with this can lead to even more annoying situations. You don't want to have two active versions of the same question after a migration was rejected, that just leads to more confusion, locking the post is meant to prevent this.

The actual bug here, apart from the tag thing you mentioned, is that the locked status of the post is not easily visible, that is because only two post notices can be active at any point.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for the explanation. I guess to find out that the question is indeed locked, I should have looked at the timeline. Or is there some other easy way to see this? $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Jan 15, 2014 at 8:45
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    $\begingroup$ @MartinSleziak When I hover over "edit", I see "Post is locked." Is it different for you? There's also "comments disabled on locked/deleted posts" in faint coloring below the comment. (Seeing as we < 10k users can see it, we can safely say it's not deleted.) $\endgroup$
    – Dennis Meng
    Jan 15, 2014 at 8:48
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks @DennisMeng. I did not try this before. Indeed, the tooltip shows when hovering over "edit". $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Jan 15, 2014 at 8:50
  • $\begingroup$ Perhaps it's worth noting that closing a question as a duplicate does not reject the migration, like the other close reasons do. $\endgroup$
    – Daniel Fischer
    Jan 15, 2014 at 12:10

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