Questions tagged [editing]
Editing is a core, fundamental Stack Exchange value -- we allow editing by registered and unregistered users (if peer reviewed).
326
questions
125
votes
17answers
13k views
Sandbox for drafts of long, complex posts
This sandbox is intended for saving drafts of long, complex posts, especially posts whose composition takes a long time. It serves to localize to one thread the front-page "bumps" caused by edits to ...
76
votes
1answer
2k views
Changing $dx$ to $\operatorname d\!x$
Seems like someone has gone on a bizarre edit spree, deciding to randomly change $dx$ to $\operatorname d\!x$ (with no other edits). This is purely a matter of stylistic choice, and I find it really ...
75
votes
1answer
813 views
Arbitrarily editing an asker's notation to fit your own preferences
I've seen several cases of other users editing a question to change all instances of an asker's $\mathbb{Z}_n$ to $\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}$, saying that the former is an incorrect notation. I don't ...
41
votes
1answer
1k views
Rejected into a tiny edit
I'm still getting used to how stack exchange sites work, so I hope this is the right place to post this (and if it's not, please let me know.)
I made a substantial revision to an answer I had read ...
41
votes
1answer
650 views
Is it okay to edit titles of questions by other users to make them more descriptive?
Is it okay to edit titles of questions by other users to make them more descriptive, less exaggerated or just better (eg. capitalization, grammar, spelling)?
40
votes
1answer
1k views
Editing to remove a “Thank you” in a post
What should be done when a (for example, brand-new) user has a question which ends with,
"Thank you."
I ask because in the "edit suggestions" review queue today there was an edit which removed such ...
40
votes
0answers
574 views
Edit session for wrong spelling of mathematicians and mathematical concepts
Wrong spelling of mathematician's names and mathematical concepts is perpetuated by their presence in highly indexed resources like stackexchange.
I think that the internet would become a better ...
38
votes
2answers
650 views
Minimum suggested edit length
I just edited a question which was missing a couple of {} in its LaTeX markup. The effect was to make it hard to work out what was going on for people (such as, I ...
35
votes
1answer
687 views
Cleaning up an old post of mine — a moral dilemma
I am aware that math.se and other se sites are intended so that people who google questions can find answers to them on this site so they don't have to actually ask the question themselves. Thus, I ...
33
votes
5answers
1k views
Retitling Questions: a modest proposal
I'd like to suggest that after a Question receives an Accepted Answer, some consideration be given to revising the title (if appropriate) to reflect what the real issue turned out to be.
It seems to ...
31
votes
1answer
907 views
is it rude to skip most edits?
Sometimes the software asks me to approve or reject edits that other users have made. If the edit is obviously spam I'm happy to reject it, or if it's obviously good I'm happy to approve it, but ...
30
votes
3answers
617 views
What to do with edits that “just add dollar signs”?
It's no secret that a lot of the people out there don't know enough LaTeX. Maybe they were never exposed to it, or maybe they are just unaware of the fact you can use MathJax on the site.
So ...
30
votes
2answers
850 views
Consider giving better titles to the questions you answered… especially right after you answer them
This is a proposal inspired by the overwhelming number of questions with uninformative titles on the site. Such titles tend to contain words like question, anyone, help, doubt, easy, exercise, ...
29
votes
6answers
709 views
Is it bad to edit your own answer several times?
I often need to edit my answers several times to fix errors or maybe to answer more directly the questions asked.
But each time I edit my answer, the post will get a bit higher in the top questions ...
28
votes
0answers
692 views
Should a mathematical error in the context of a question be edited?
This is a scenario I have encountered a few times when going through the edit suggestion review queue.
An asker posts a question and as context they provide some information that they used when ...
28
votes
0answers
386 views
Why restrict my ability to change my vote once I have editing priveleges?
Yesterday I intended to upvote an answer, but accidentally downvoted. I did not notice this and did not change it within the five-minute window for changing votes. Later that day I noticed a drop on 1 ...
27
votes
2answers
951 views
Abuse “Reject-and-Edit” to reject singlehandedly
Although it requires 2 contributors (rep $\geq2000$) to reject an edit, it only needs 1 by "rejecting and editing" actually. And later, I found this problem have been came up before.
Today I found ...
27
votes
1answer
319 views
Is it ok to edit questions that are closed as duplicates?
I think that duplicates can be useful for various reasons. In particular, they might help to find a question if a user searches for different keywords. Similarly, they might appear in autogenerated ...
27
votes
0answers
474 views
Race condition in editing question
I have noticed this problem. Let's say when I first see a question, it is in version $A$. It is badly formatted, so I click edit. However, it takes a long time for me to edit. Before I finish, someone ...
26
votes
6answers
1k views
How much editing is too much?
Occasionally there are questions in dire need of editing. Often, I wonder, how much editing is too much?
Specifically I am refering to this MSE thread. I felt my first edit was quite aggressive, ...
26
votes
4answers
483 views
To the editors: strip “Proof”, “Help”, “Question”, “Problem”, etc. from titles on-the-fly
The title says it all. I'm aware that there have been many related threads in the past. But a new thread on more or less the same topic every once in a while doesn't seem so bad to me.
Specifically, ...
26
votes
0answers
970 views
wrong edit made by a user
I have asked Homotopy invariance of de Rham cohomology question
Some user has changed the context from homotopy invariant(by which I mean homotopy equivalent) to diffeomorphic. This is totally ...
25
votes
2answers
721 views
Is too much self editing frowned upon?
I have found myself re-editing quite a bit until I feel a question is right, either I got things wrong (oops) or just get in a perfectionist mode, and have wondered what happens whenever I press the <...
24
votes
1answer
856 views
What happened on April 2017?
I used the query in this answer to see the number of edits per month and I was fairly surprised as April 2017 had $86,444$ edits.
The graph of edits per day is even more surprising as one day had $55,...
24
votes
4answers
543 views
Editing someone else's question to add context
I recently came across a problem statement question about a block matrix inverse. The original author did not include context, and the question got put on hold.
I personally know a lot of situations ...
24
votes
1answer
611 views
Removal of the “too minor” reason for rejecting an edit
The edit review system appears to have been updated, and among the changes is the removal of the "too minor" reason for rejecting an edit.
Does anyone know why this has been changed? Are minor edits ...
24
votes
0answers
457 views
Editing closed questions to add answers
Recently we have seen quite a few instances of users editing questions that are closed to add their answers to the body of the questions themselves.
That is a clear subversion of the rules and an ...
23
votes
1answer
663 views
Wrong spelling of “occurrence”
On Mathematics Stack Exchange, there are 30,436 posts containing "occurence" versus 3,287 posts containing "occurrence", although "occurrence" is the right spelling (in English and in French).
I am ...
22
votes
3answers
506 views
Dumb Edits keep bumping questions
I am wondering if there is a work around to keep my edits from bumping questions. I recently saw a tex error in my answer and fixed it, I don't think that this should bump the question. Also, when I ...
22
votes
2answers
373 views
Should one rename questions with titles not unique enough?
I have asked several questions here, some of which had already been answered in other questions whose titles were not explicit enough for me to find them through the questions search/suggestions.
...
22
votes
1answer
305 views
Latex preview when initially composing an answer
When one starts writing an answer, it is not possible to turn off the live preview of the answer. This makes it rather painful when composing long, latex-rich answers. The only way around it is to ...
22
votes
0answers
569 views
User adding irrelevant tags
There have been a couple days now when at around the same time, a certain user has been going through old posts marked with the 'probability' tag and editing them to add irrelevant tags, most commonly ...
21
votes
2answers
903 views
When does editing become over editing?
We strive that the questions and answers on the site will be as full and complete as possible, that is very understandable.
We also want them to be as readable as humanly possible, whether it means ...
21
votes
2answers
1k views
Editing Other's Answers Etiquette
You see an answer which is incorrect in formatting or content, but is easily fixable. What do you do?
I see three reasonable (active) options:
1) Add a comment explaining the issue and the suggested ...
21
votes
1answer
352 views
Is there a way to edit without bumping the question?
I'm a kind of person who like to see no flaw in the answers I posted here (I'm sure many of us mathematicians here share the same value as me to a certain extent). For that reason, I usually double ...
20
votes
2answers
1k views
How much (self) editing is too much?
(N.B. not to be confused with this question)
We are all aware of editing being a core value of the part-Wiki nature of the Stack Exchange websites.
We are also all aware of the website providing a ...
20
votes
1answer
305 views
Why we need more than one review to accept an edit?
As you all know, once a user reach 2000 reputation he is able to edit questions and answers. Users with less than 2000 reputation can also edit a post however their edit needs to be reviewed and ...
20
votes
1answer
338 views
Why were new parts added to a question by “community” months after the original was answered?
In March 2014, the question
Find the Nash equilibria for a joint project modeled as a strategic game
was migrated here from MathOverflow.
It was promptly answered and the OP accepted the answer.
In ...
20
votes
1answer
343 views
Should old questions be retitled?
The title for Is there a formula for this? is currently "Is there a formula for this?"
Obviously, this doesn't describe the problem at all, except to say that the OP is looking for a formula. It ...
20
votes
2answers
611 views
What to do about repeated bad edits?
I came across a couple of dodgy edits in the review queue, both of which I rejected and both of which ended up being accepted. The two in question are here and here. (Edit: Actually, I only rejected ...
20
votes
0answers
168 views
Mathjax stops rendering after clicking “An edit has been made to this post”
I have noticed in the last two weeks or so that after clicking the "An edit has been made ..." banner, the mathjax is not rendered.
Example (before):
(and after):
Refreshing the page renders the ...
19
votes
2answers
540 views
List of commonly misspelled words
Judging by some of the posts on meta1 and comments posted there it seems that there are users who try to improve the posts by correcting spelling mistakes. Of course, there are other ways to improve ...
19
votes
2answers
674 views
Does that count as defacement?
I noticed that there is a recent habit of a particular user to edit old questions and add his own questions on the topic instead of opening a new question.
I suppose that this is a precaution to ...
18
votes
2answers
746 views
Is English (US) vs English (UK) grounds for an edit?
I use SOX and I get notified whenever there is anything new on meta. Today, I saw
this edit to a post. It replaced favourites with ...
18
votes
2answers
722 views
Was this edit acceptable?
I asked this question on Meta Stack Exchange, and we there came to the conclusion that the edit made sense. I figured I'd ask here anyway, just to see how the communinty thinks of it
MJD has other ...
18
votes
1answer
454 views
Etiquette for undoing edit to my answer?
Someone recently edited an answer I wrote earlier today:
https://math.stackexchange.com/a/969737/155629
Usually I'm happy to receive edits, but in this case the edit does not reflect the intention ...
18
votes
1answer
426 views
Editing the problem by an answerer to “make” their answer “correct”
I just noticed that an user, call them $A$ (for "answer", not their real user name) has edited this problem, apparently with the aim of adding an extra hypothesis (namely that the measure of the ...
18
votes
1answer
441 views
What should I do when I get the correct answer to a question I didn't mean to ask?
So I recently asked this question. After reading the responses, and a day's worth of rabbit-holing, I've realized that I asked the wrong question (I also made the mistake of using the letter $\omega$ ...
18
votes
1answer
574 views
When you spot someone gaming for edit related badges
In every system which rewards points and badges people are bound to game it from time to time.
I see it like this:
There are games which have little to no negative effect (e.g. voting a lot of ...
18
votes
1answer
467 views
How to deal with refusal of editing?
See Find Lim$_{n\rightarrow\infty}$ $\sum_{k=1}^{n}$ $\frac{k^{3}+6k^{2}+11k+5}{\left(k+3\right)!}$
The asker of this question is refusing edits made to his post and he rolls back to previous version,...
