Aggressive Edits

Question

Update

3 weeks following this discussion, the question has been closed, is sitting at -2 score, and has two answers with a combined +1 score. This is not to say "I told you so", but rather to say that if the community disagrees with an aggressive edit, I would strongly invite those who disagree with aggressive edits to find another way (be it supporting the poster through comments, or making less aggressive edits, or even just casting reopen votes if they think the original post is correct).

As-is, this post has fallen in to limbo, the asker hasn't been seen since asking the question, hasn't contributed anything else, and hasn't accepted an answer. Not the best outcome we could have hoped for.

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Background

Today I aggressively edited this question:

https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/16682/how-can-i-respond-to-an-uncomfortable-working-environment-beside-quitting

When I made the edit, it had no answers, a downvote, and a close vote. Had I not edited, I would have added another close vote and downvote.

Here is my edit. After my edit, it managed to increase its score to +1, prior to this rollback by Simon. Prior to the rollback, I had received this comment from Meredith Poor which read:

@jmac - my feeling is that the edit was too aggressive, however I agree that the original post shows quite a bit of drift.

Two hours later the question was put on hold by the community.

Community Reception of Aggressive Edits

I have a long history of aggressive edits.

I tried to be as fair and accurate collecting the data as I could to give an honest picture of what sorts of edits I have been making, not to try to make me look good.

Based on those stats, I have 30 aggressive edits. Of those 30, 4 were received poorly:

1. One for being a duplicate
2. Two with negative score and closed
3. One where the asker strongly disagreed with my edit (though didn't roll it back, may be due to unfamiliarity, happy to take the hit on this one)

Of the remaining 27, almost half (13) of the askers thanked me or otherwise commented that they agreed with my edit in some way (at any rate, were not being negative). Two were mixed message comments. The other 12 had no comment.

This is not to toot my own horn. I believe that our responsibility as volunteers on this site is to do our best to help people. I try to do that through aggressive edits. Many questions we get quickly collect a few close votes and downvotes and are gaining the wrong kind of momentum early. When I can see a core question that I think will help the person asking, I make those edits, because I think a question that benefits the asker will be good for them, and good for The Workplace.

Discussion

Many people have experienced confusion about these aggressive edits, so I am putting my experience out there for the community. Do we want these sorts of edits? And when are they appropriate?

Data

Here are the questions I used for stats for your review:

• 16 upvotes: What information/guarantees should I get from a company in financial difficulty?
• 7 upvotes + thanks: How can I negotiate a bonus in to a base salary raise?
• 20 upvotes + thanks: How do I bring up being misled about my job role during the interview period?
• 5 upvotes but closed as dupe: Is it poor etiquette to give unsolicited suggestions when new on the job?
• 4 upvotes (questionable whether asker appreciated the edit or not, see comments): How can I negotiate a salary increase in a new job?
• 1 upvote + thanks: What in a background check can be grounds for revoking an offer?
• 4 upvotes: How should I negotiate a salary with conflicting information?
• 8 upvotes: How can I tell my manager the task I was assigned is beyond my current ability?
• 4 upvotes (possibly not aggressive): How should my resume address a 6-year period to receive a 4-year degree?
• -1 score and closed: Is my contract still valid if my job has changed?
• 10 upvotes and thanks: What is the best way of approaching a former employer for a job?
• 1 upvote and thanks: What criteria should I use to judge job-posting sites?
• 3 upvotes and thanks, but rolled back later by the asker: How can I prevent a notice period from being unreasonably extended?
• 4 upvotes and thanks: Is it appropriate to approach references based on interviewer comments?
• 8 upvotes and thanks: How can I decide if I should use a title (Mr./Ms.) when e-mailing a prospective employer?
• 14 upvotes: How can I sell a blue-collar technical background when applying for white-collar technical jobs?
• -1 score and closed: How can I minimize the risks of moonlighting in violation of my contract?
• 13 upvotes and thanks: How can cultural adaptability be evaluated when hiring an employee from another country?
• 11 upvotes: How can I avoid divisive political issues at work?
• 13 upvotes: How can I delay an interview?
• 16 upvotes: How much should I say in an exit interview?
• 68 upvotes and thanks: How can I respond to an employee who objects to working on certain projects on ethical grounds?
• 12 upvotes and thanks: How should I approach interviewing through an interpreter?
• 12 upvotes: When should I address being made redundant when applying for jobs?
• 10 upvotes: What information is important when introducing yourself to coworkers you have never met?
• 7 upvotes and reopened: How can an organization keep the benefits of generalists on large-scale projects?
• 5 upvotes (questionable whether asker appreciated the edit or not, see comments/revision history): How should I decide whether to take over someone else's work tasks?
• 1 upvote + thanks: https://workplace.stackexchange.com/posts/15539/revisions
• 1 upvote + thanks: I want to find ways to get past phone interviews
• 4 upvotes + strong disagreement: When is it appropriate to let on to your boss you are looking at other jobs?

I left out the two questions I edited today. You can take a look at my revision history here if you want to check to see if I left any big edits out.

Answer 1

I think the end result was exactly what should have happened here. In the end the question was deleted. If you think that a version of the question would be worth having on the site that is different from the original question asked, then write your own question. But completely reworking a question that eliminates the original question nearly completely is not the way to handle it.

Answer 2

I rolled it back because the edit basically removed a large amount of context of what the person was saying.

For example:

Your edit:

I am a new female employee in a mostly male office environment, with an unsatisfying job scope. I brought this up with my manager

vs

Due to those facts I recently had a talk with my boss (I initiated it) on the advice of the team lead to discuss my career so far and the future prospects for me at my company.

Your edit appears to imply that she is complaining about the lack of job scope and that there are too many men in her work environment, when her meeting was to discuss her career.

Also "male office environment" was further expanded on by her with:

Also, I work in a predominantly male team where the concept of manners and the kind of polite behaviour I am accustomed to is mostly absent.

So you left it out that she is dealing with a male team that do not act professionally.

That said, the question certainly needs to be cleaned up, but not at the expense of removing the context of the question, as it just leads to answers which don't help the OP. (TBH it looks like two questions)

[Edit]

Just to clarify. I have no issue at all with your aggressive edits (I even up voted your link just now). However I felt that your edit did not convey what the OP was asking, so any answers to the edit would have been off topic and not have helped the OP.

Reversion was not a perfect solution but at least others reading the question would see the proper context and possibly clean up the question better. Feel free to edit again with the proper context.

Answer 3

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.