10

As you might know, posts autoconvert to community wiki when they are edited many times by the owner (among other conditions).

Normally this is set to 10 edits, however there have been multiple cases where owners who are continuously improving their answers get unjustly punished by this mechanism.

This is relevant on skeptics because users are encouraged to publish long, exhaustive answers with plenty of links and explanations - this obviously increases the need for editing.

Should we ask the community team to increase this limit? I am sure there are drawbacks and possibilities for abuse, but I think we should debate the pros and cons and eventually ask for an increased limit.

  • Has there ever been a case where somebody has felt unduly punished and not have their question reverted back from community wiki by a mod when the flag it for review? – user5582 Apr 21 '13 at 23:45
  • @Sancho there have been at least two cases recently. – Sklivvz Apr 22 '13 at 2:17
  • It seems we have another contender at skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/15981/… – Suma Apr 25 '13 at 10:45
4

Considering the requirement to have such detailed citations and answers, and as you said, people are always improving their answers, it does seem to unfairly punish this particular community. Although, what we may consider is having a threshold for having this kick in. Perhaps answers that have over a specific number of views or votes?

  • I'm not sure I understand the idea of having a threshold based on number of views or votes. Does that mean the 10 edit threshold only counts edits made after it reaches the vote or view threshold? Does that include edits made previous to the threshold? – Beofett Apr 22 '13 at 16:04
  • @Beofett I was thinking that once a question or answer gets a bit of notoriety, the limit should increase. My reasoning is because those questions get viewed more and have a tendency to get edited more. Although Suma has an excellent contribution as well. – Larian LeQuella Apr 23 '13 at 1:47
  • 2
    Thanks for clarifying. I know one of the answers that triggered CW recently was brand new, and was still accumulating votes and views when the author triggered CW by repeatedly improving the answer, so I'm not sure how low the threshold should be to be effective. – Beofett Apr 23 '13 at 12:10
4

Would it be possible to change Stack Exchange so that it changes to CW not based on total edits count, but based on the count of different persons making edits? That seems to make more sense anyway.

  • Yes this would be much more useful, and make so much more sense. – Wertilq Apr 22 '13 at 6:43
  • It's already taken into account, however there is also a 10 edit per users limit (on this site). Should we change it? – Sklivvz Apr 23 '13 at 22:23
  • Is the limit for each user, including original poster? If it is, I think it should be highly extended (say to 50). I see no reason why an original poster could not edit the post ad lib. – Suma Apr 24 '13 at 5:17
0

Should we ask the community team to increase this limit?

Yes.

I am sure there are drawbacks and possibilities for abuse, but I think we should debate the pros and cons and eventually ask for an increased limit.

The only 'con', the reason why answers are auto-converted, is to prevent 'bumping' ... which is where a user keeps editing their answer, to force it to the top of the 'Active' view.

IMO such 'bumping' isn't a problem which we experience on Skeptics ... it would be readily noticeable if it were.

-2

I suggest to add a special flag that a user can flag their posts that became CW which means, "this post should be reverted back from CW". As I know that there were cases where a post was "reverted" from CW status.

While this suggestion doesn't come to solve the problem, It'll (IMO) help to fix the issue once it arises quicker. As it'll give a clearer option of what to do if you fill that your post was converted to CW in an "unfair" matter, and the moderators will identify those posts easier.

It may be hard to find the magical number of edits for when a post should become CW, and even then the problem may still occur in some extreme cases.

This shouldn't come instead of a permanent fix, but as a supplement

What happens sometimes today is that meta question might be raised just for this, I've seen at least one occasion of it: Answer becomes Community Wiki?.

  • It's better to fix a problem by not having a problem, than to make things unnecessary complex. – Wertilq Apr 29 '13 at 15:19
  • @Wertilq, you are right, but it may take a lot of time to come to the exact right number of edits to transform posts to CW, and even then errors may happen. This does not come to replace a permanent solution, but to add to it. – SIMEL Apr 29 '13 at 15:22
  • Why have autoconvert to CW, and the flag to revert from CW, instead of flagging to change to CW? – Wertilq Apr 29 '13 at 15:24
  • @Wertilq, Users don't usually see the number of edits made to a post, so I think the the chance of a post that should become a CW be flagged as one is much lower then a post that became a CW wrongly flagged as a non-CW – SIMEL Apr 29 '13 at 15:31

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