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I joined this website thinking it was a place to talk with other people and help with issues in the working world. I have asked one question that was put on hold by 5 people for apparently not being relevant enough. I then edited my question to have it edited like crazy.

Do our questions have to be perfect in grammar?

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    Questions asked on here may be driven by personal circumstances, but they are posted and answered for the benefit of others too. This is why a question may be put on hold if it is too specific to one company or organisation (as your previous question was). Posts are usually edited for the same reason. I think it has actually been reopened as a result. (I can't comment on the specifics as I don't know exactly why it was reopened). – user34587 Sep 21 '17 at 14:32
  • The questions and answers need to be clear, concise, have a clear goal we can address, and be on topic. Questions about choices you make, legal questions unanswerable by someone of an HR level or below, rants against coworkers, company policies are off topic. – Neo Sep 21 '17 at 14:34
  • One of the first comments (mine) asked you for a country, Why didn't you provide that. – Old_Lamplighter Sep 21 '17 at 14:34
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    I strongly encourage you to take a look at our tour and help center. I think it might help clear up some misconceptions about what this site is and how we operate. – David K Sep 21 '17 at 14:39
  • I made an edit here because the original version of this was not constructive. – enderland Sep 21 '17 at 14:47
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    @enderland you win the prize for understatement of the year – Old_Lamplighter Sep 21 '17 at 14:50
  • @RichardU I did not get a chance to come back to the board until today to provide that – Christeena Sep 21 '17 at 14:55
  • @Kozaky I could not contact HR since I no longer worked there. – Christeena Sep 21 '17 at 14:58
  • @enderland did you not see the bottom of the post where I wrote that this question was intended to not get edited. I come to message boards and I talk with out worrying about all of the little edits. Had I known it was this type of site I would have have done it differently. Which again points to people not wanting to help me, just wanting to fell good about themselves for calling out my run on sentences. – Christeena Sep 21 '17 at 15:01
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    @Christeena You obviously don't believe it, but the edits are to help your question get answered, not to "feel good" for doing it. Also, enderland is a moderator. Your question, as written, was rude and insulting. It's his responsibility to remove such things whether you want them removed or not. We have what's called a "Be nice" policy. Your post was violating that. – Chris E Sep 21 '17 at 15:06
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    @Christeena if you want to rant or accuse the community you just aren't going to find this is a welcoming place for that. If you want to keep this as a rant, it will be closed and deleted in short succession. I encourage you to read the links that David K provided here about how Stack Exchange works. – enderland Sep 21 '17 at 15:07
  • @ChristopherEstep can you direct me on how to delete my account then – Christeena Sep 21 '17 at 15:09
  • @Christeena workplace.stackexchange.com/help/deleting-account – enderland Sep 21 '17 at 15:27
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I'll answer your first question.

is this place a message board

No. It's a Q&A site, specifically for questions about navigating the workplace.

But like all Stack Exchange sites, it takes 5 people with a certain reputation to close it. But guess what? It can also be reopened.

As for edits, they happen. If you, as the author, don't like edits you can also roll them back. It's ultimately your question. But when we edit a question, it's to improve it in some way or another, either to make it more on topic or, yes, to fix grammar. This is a good thing. But as I said, you can always roll them back. Everyone has their questions or answers edited for grammar and clarity, including me. It is what it is.

I would suggest you take to heart the answers that were put there before the question was closed. There's some good advice there, as well as in some of the comments. I would also suggest not taking edits so personally, especially when this question could use some edits to make it more readable and less of a big wall of words.

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  • I removed the inflammatory stuff from the OP, which is why I edited that out here. – enderland Sep 21 '17 at 14:47
  • @enderland understood and appreciated. – Chris E Sep 21 '17 at 14:51
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    @Christeena He is a moderator....he was elected to do exactly what he did which was edit a rude, insulting question/rant into something useful. – Neo Sep 21 '17 at 15:08
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    Not to mention, I was actually appreciative of the edit. – Chris E Sep 21 '17 at 15:09
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The wording was likely fixed to give the question a chance to be reopened.

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    And it just was reopened, though it may be closed again as a duplicate of another question. – David K Sep 21 '17 at 14:30
  • I did the first edit b/c of a flag.After I did my edit someone choose to edit it in fancy wording. I was new & was not aware that there were rules on your question to sound and look like perfection. If that is how this website is that is fine, but new users should have that chance for someone to explain that to them not for people to vote the question down, and flag them and leave sassy comments. This is a place that people come to for HELP, – Christeena Sep 21 '17 at 14:48
  • @DavidK so can you answer my overall question. Is this a website where people are more interested in finding things to report or close a question, like you JUST did by looking at my question, and less interested in helping the person asking the question, which you did not. If this is that kind of page , fine I will gladly find another site where people are more focused on helping people than finding everything wrong with the question. – Christeena Sep 21 '17 at 14:52
  • @Christeena The motive in marking a question as a duplicate is that hopefully your question has already been answered somewhere and you can get the help you need by reading the already existing post. If you feel that your question is significantly different, you can always explain why you feel that your question was not answered in the linked post. We also link duplicates to make answers easy to find for other users. It's better to have one primary easy-to-find question with well written answers than 50 nearly identical questions scattered across the site. – David K Sep 21 '17 at 15:06
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    @Christeena And as to your comments about having your question edited for grammar, as others have mentioned, you shouldn't take that personally. We aren't criticizing or judging you - our goal is to make your question easy to understand to everyone. For many of our users who are not native english speakers, having correct spelling and grammar can be particularly helpful. – David K Sep 21 '17 at 15:10
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Yes, spelling and grammar count. We ALWAYS edit for that because it is for the benefit of ALL who come to this site. I have had numerous posts edited as have most everyone else here.

The questions and answers need to be clear, concise, have a clear goal we can address, and be on topic. Questions about choices you make, legal questions unanswerable by someone of an HR level or below, rants against coworkers, company policies, et cetera are off topic.

When a question is closed, it is not dead. It often gets discussed in here, edits are suggested, and it is sometimes reopened. This is not about forming cliques, this is not about picking on anyone, it is not about ranting.

It is about what is and what is not good for the site. While we are here to help, we are not here to take abuse or to be chastised for the decisions we make. If your question is closed, the best thing to do is to come in here and ask:

My question about XYZ corporation was closed. I'm not sure what I can do to improve it to get it reopened. Does anyone have any edits or suggestions for me.

Do that, and you'll find people coming out of the woodwork to help you. Come in and insult people, and you will find that while we won't be insulting back, as we have a "be nice" rule in place, we simply won't help you.

I suggest you try again and assume positive motives with regards to the people here.. We are a good and helpful group with fantastic moderators. That said, we do need good questions to work with or at least participants who are willing to listen to constructive criticism when given.

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In general, Stack Exchange is a place where you pose specific questions in the hope of receiving specific answers.

One of the most strikingly different aspect of Stack Exchange is that, once you've asked your question - it is no longer fully yours - it belongs to the community where you asked it, and community members are encouraged to edit and improve it with the aim of making the question and any answers it receives useful and valuable to many more people than just you the original 'asker'.

As long as edits don't materially change the intent of the question, they are welcomed as improvements. They are not judgments against you - they are simply improvements to the question.

One of Stack Exchange's stated goals is to build a repository of good questions and answers which will be searchable & useful to many more people, and this is the method they've chosen to do that.

I'd strongly encourage you to read the full tour page to try to get a handle on how this system works.

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    it is no longer fully yours Yeah, that's not true at all. While anyone can edit (or suggest edits), the OP always has the ability to reject the edits and roll them back. – Chris E Sep 21 '17 at 14:48
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    @ChristopherEstep - Sure you can always roll edits back, but the point is that 'asking a question' here is really 'making a contribution' to the community. Once you hit that 'Post Your Question' button, it's not just about you anymore. Here on The Workplace in particular we sometimes actively discourage being too specific in questions because, for example, "Questions seeking company-specific advice" are explicitly off-topic. Edits are regularly made here which make questions more generally applicable and less specific to the users who asked them. – brhans Sep 21 '17 at 16:47
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    @ChristopherEstep the OP can reject the edits, but depending on what the change was, that could lead to the post getting deleted. And OPs aren't allowed to vandalize their posts (there's even a suspension reason for that), so they don't get the final say in all cases. Editing is meant to be collaborative; editors need to respect the original content and authors need to be open to improvements. – Monica Cellio Sep 24 '17 at 21:29

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