How should we adjust our approach to editing to minimize conflicts?

Question

We've had some questions asked recently that were edited by the community that changed the meaning of the post significantly, at least in the eyes of the asker or other members of the community. This resulted in some debate and discontent in the comments.

For instance: https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/16691/how-can-i-express-sympathy-to-a-coworker-whos-father-was-about-to-die and the question referenced in the meta discussion on Aggressive Edits, were both edited but led to some disagreements. More recently, How should I adjust my interview questions for female candidates? was also edited, and the edits weren't well received by the asker.

I've been a proponent of bold editing. While bold or aggressive edits can indeed yield positive results, sometimes this backfires. It's no one's fault. None of us can read minds, and we're all doing the best we can to create great content and help askers find answers, but the recent discontent does suggest that we might need to come together and slightly tweak our approach to editing. As the pendulum swings back and forth between the two extremes of no editing and complete, open editing, we're making great progress in terms of finding the sweet spot where we find balance.

What can we do as editors to help avoid conflict with askers when editing, and how should we handle edits where there might be disagreement? Should we wait for a question to actually be put on hold before resorting to aggressive or bold edits?

Answer 1

Executive Summary

My stance on edits is simple: a closed question doesn't get answers and can't help the asker or any future visitors. If an edit can turn a non-productive closed question in to a resource, then that is a net positive.

But the devil is in the details. I think there are three issues that need to be tackled:

1. What balance between asker happiness and question quality are we after?
2. When should we edit to maximize that balance?
3. How should we inform the people whose questions we edit?

Acceptable Loss

We are not going to be able to find an edit policy which keeps every single asker happy, and still maintains high quality standards that keep questions open. Often questions are very off-topic when originally asked, and minor edits will not make a difference on whether the question stays open or closed. Some askers may be put off by an aggressive edit at first, but that is just an invitation to have them work with us to make it on-topic. If someone is not willing to put in the effort to work with the community, I won't lose any sleep over it if they decide not to participate here.

I think we need to judge the balance based on three criteria:

1. What percent of edited questions do we want to remain open?
2. What percent of edited questions do we want positive feedback from the asker on?
3. What percent of edited questions are we okay with having negative feedback on?

I think we should aim for a 90% success rate in keeping questions we edit open. If we edit the question and it doesn't stay open, we run the risk of alienating the user and we don't manage to actually help them out. I think we should aim for at least a quarter of the users we help thanking us for our support. And I think we should aim for less than 5% of people being actively upset with our edits. These are all fuzzy numbers, based roughly on my experience in the Aggressive Edits meta question (my stats are 90%, 40%, and 10%).

When Should We Edit?

Part of the issue with the reaction to edits has to do with timing. If a question is closed and downvoted with no answers, there will likely be a lot less opposition than if the question has upvotes, answers, and is open. If a question has been open for 12 hours and then is edited, it is going to have a very different reaction than if it's been open for 12 minutes, or if it has been around for 12 days.

I think that questions should either be edited soon after being asked, or that we should wait until they are closed (or soon to be closed, if it has 4 close votes and you would issue the 5th without an edit, I am okay with that too). If we make a quick edit with a helpful comment, then the asker can participate in the editing process and it feels like they have more control. If you wait 12 hours and they come back to a totally different question with a bunch of answers, they may feel like their question was hijacked without their consent, especially if the answers don't help respond to their concern.

I would recommend something like this for a workflow:

1. If the question is new, make a comment first, and make a quick edit to get the asker to participate
2. If the question is several hours old and still open, only edit if it looks like it will be closed (it has no good answers, downvotes, close votes, etc.)
3. If the question is already closed with no answers, have at it (anything is better than a no-answer closed question)

Comments are Key

Giving a reason for an edit usually makes the edit easier to stomach. The key points of an effective comment are:

1. Explaining why you decided to edit this question
2. Explaining how this will benefit the asker
3. Explaining that the asker is encouraged to participate in the edit process

For instance, take this comment on a question I made an aggressive edit to:

Hello kaushcho, and welcome to the Workplace! This is a great question that is unfortunately attracting a few close votes due to the formatting¹. I've edited it a bit to hopefully prevent more close votes and get you better answers². If you think I missed the point entirely, or otherwise screwed it up, feel free to edit it³ (I took out details on his evaluation, since you are asking about evaluating the cultural -- not technical -- aspects). Thanks for the great question and I hope you'll stick around!

The superscript numbers correspond to the various portions above. I am sure to let the asker know that I'm not just editing for my own sake, that the question was getting close votes. I let them know that I'm editing it for the asker's benefit -- so they can get better answers and not have the question closed. And I make sure to let them know that even though I made the edit, they are encouraged to make sure the question still matches what they want to ask. The rest is just friendliness to take the edge off what is a really aggressive edit.

I think that whenever we make an edit, we should be sure to leave a friendly comment explaining at least these three things to try to involve the asker in improving their own question. Unfortunately, the comment threads in both of the referenced questions have been deleted, so I can't see if that may have been a factor in the bad reactions there.

Answer 2

My opinion is that any edits to "Save" a question should only happen after the question has been closed, unless the OP has clarified, or the question can be easily reworded.

So we need to close the questions quickly and start punishing people who answer bad questions with downvotes and comments explaining that. I am sure that this part will not be well recieved but unless we can stop the bad answers from being populated, then we have to choose between agressive edits quickly or deal with answers that do not fit the question that gets revised.

Answer 3

We should consider that heroic answers aren't always best.

Before making a heroic edit, we should ask the OP if they'd like a little help fixing their post so that it will remain open.

Leaving a comment saying,

"Hi OP, I've made a heroic edit to make your post more constructive..."

may seem condescending if the edit is not welcome.

Answer 4

There are a few key things that I think one must keep in mind while editing a question. These are some of the things one can ask him/herself before editing.

1. Context : How can you be sure of portraying the same context that the OP originally intended? Are you 100% sure of the situation OP faces ? If not, avoid tweaking the context.
2. Typos : Yeah, go ahead fix em.
3. Grammar : Sure, fix it.
4. Regional Influence : One of the most important things I have learned working in international companies is, what people write is how people think, and, that people tend to think in their native language. What might seem like a statement to someone bred in an American conversation style, really is a question for someone who is typing that out in India. People from different religions also tend to ask questions in a certain way and tweaking them could change the entire context from the OPs perspective (There was a question which asked how to treat Mulsim women). Examples escape my mind now, but I can edit this answer when I come across some.
5. The most important question the editor should ask is, does this question really require editing ? What is my contribution ? What is the point of editing a question merely for the sake of it not being put on hold. Is the question answering the OP ? More importantly is it contributing to workplace's Q&A
   
   I think the only way to handle conflict resulting from an edit is to roll it back and let the question take its way. Workplace is an international Q & A site. People from all over the world are contributing in developing a great question base.
   
   Aside : I am a big fan of your edits. IMO, you are, indeed, one of the best editors. This is a great question and shows how conscious you are.

Answer 5

Example: 'How does a programmer change programming languages, professionally?'. Someone offered up an edit to strip out the C#/MVC/ROR specific nature of the question to make it 'generic'. One of the comments was that this belongs in 'Programmers' due to the specific nature of the question. If someone puts in a response to the programmer question then it gets converted to 'generic', then the person answering the question is going to be asked to make the answer 'generic'.

Perhaps a named programming language is too specific, but if made 'generic', it should be left at the 'generic' programming level - not 'across the board to any given professional skill'. Software development has it's respective quirks, they might not interest anyone in chemical engineering or orthopedics.

People migrate 'long distance' in software development - what this means is that there are millions of developers that shift abruptly into areas of specialization they're not familiar with. Engineers in other disciplines tend to have a limited set of employers and limited variety in their work, in comparison - there aren't 10 million businesses drilling oil wells. If you build bridges on contract in New Jersey, the bridges there aren't likely to be much different from the ones in Illinois. In comparison, someone could be writing C++ for 'gaming machines' in 2007 and SPSS for a state insurance board in 2009. It's a stretch, but it does happen.