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Comments on Could we have a way to edit without bumping posts?

Parent

Could we have a way to edit without bumping posts?

+14
−3

Whenever a post is edited, the question is automatically bumped to the top of the category post list.

This is useful for major changes to posts because people can see that something has changed. However, it is a slight annoyance when the edit is extremely minor, such as changing the tags of a question or fixing a spelling mistake. In those touch-up cases, there isn't really a significant change that warrants the increased attention.

Also, I'm sure nobody needs to be subjected to ten posts being bumped to the top of the feed just because a new tag was created, and old posts were updated with it.

I personally have avoided editing old posts for exactly this reason; we don't have much activity as it is, so having already well-answered questions be bumped and push down more recent unanswered questions seems counterproductive.

Could we have a way to mark an edit as "minor" or something, or otherwise have an option to not bump the post? This mark would ideally be applied by the edit reviewers, who we trust to make these types of calls.

Note that other than not bumping the post, there would be no functional difference from normal edits. The edits would still have to be reviewed, would show the edited indicator that includes who edited, and would still appear in the edit history, as normal.


Possible concerns raised

It will allow malicious edits to go unnoticed

[H]ow do you get around the case where someone makes a major or malicious edit, then tries to hide that by claiming it was minor? — Olin Lathrop

The review system exists for a reason. If someone attempts to maliciously edit another's post, that should be caught by the review system.

If they are editing their own post, well, the only harm done is to themselves.

If they can edit others' posts without review, well... I'd be more concerned about how a malicious person managed to gain that ability.

Bumping gives unanswered questions attention

There are better ways of giving attention to unanswered or poorly answered questions. Since they mention SE, I will note they have a specific tab for unanswered questions. They also have a bounty system, though it wouldn't be easy to set up here due to Codidact being relatively less rep focused.

Besides, it's not like this suggestion is to remove the ability to bump; it is to add the ability to not bump. If someone wants to bump a post to give it more attention, they still have that ability[1]

Edits should notify the author regardless of how minor

Edits to other people's posts should always generate notifications to the author, major or minor. — Monica Cellio

I certainly want to know about all edit anyone makes to my posts. — Olin Lathrop

I agree.

How would the minor label be determined?

We shouldn't try to programmatically determine what a "minor" edit is; in the right context, one character is a major edit. Designation as minor needs to be human-powered. — Monica Cellio

I personally think that the label should be applied at the time of review; We already trust reviewers to be able to judge good and bad edits, so it doesn't seem much of a stretch to let them judge whether to bump due to an edit.


  1. Whether they should be doing such is another issue. ↩︎

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2 comment threads

Spam seed (1 comment)
General comments (9 comments)
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+0
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By default all edits should show

Every time an edit is made, the post or its parent should move to the top of the question list. This reduces the chance of an edit being missed by the community.

Not every edit is reviewed. Some people have the Edit Posts ability and can edit without review, and the post author can always edit without review. A reviewer's decision is also not reviewed. Showing the post at the top of the question list allows the community to provide an element of informal review and raise any problems they see.

Users can choose their own sorts and filters

If a user does not wish to see the default view of the question list, they are free to change the sort order or apply filters. For example, they may choose to view only unanswered questions, in order of age rather than activity. This way they would not see edits.

Since this option is already available, I see no reason to change the default view of the question list. All users who have not chosen to prevent it will see edited posts, reducing the chance of malicious or accidentally detrimental edits going unnoticed.

Bad edits can be arbitrarily small

While the idea of treating small edits as insignificant is appealingly convenient, this would allow a variety of problems:

  • Deliberately offensive statements
  • Dangerously misleading statements or code
  • Spam and phishing links

A word or even a single character change can be sufficient to introduce any of these, so there is no lower limit which could be set as a safe threshold.

For example, the idea of introducing a malicious link sounds like it would require at least enough characters for a valid markdown link, but if the malicious editor is also the author of the post, they could post an innocuous link in the original post and later change a single character - malicious links are commonly a single character different from an innocuous link in order to take advantage of people who make typos while entering a URL.

Neither the editor nor the reviewer is well placed to decide

The editor, the reviewer, or both could be malicious, so allowing either of them to decide which edits should be hidden from the community is not appropriate.

This also applies to a post author editing their own post. A spammer should not be able to decide that an edit to their own post should be hidden.

Long game spammers can work in pairs to build up trust and then approve each other's edits. Getting past a single review is easy if you are in contact with a malicious reviewer. Getting past all of the eyes in the community is more challenging. Every edit needs to be available for the community to inspect.

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2 comment threads

Trust (7 comments)
Custom filtering and sorting is not ideal to new users (1 comment)
Trust

Not every edit is reviewed. Some people have the Edit Posts ability and can edit without review, and the post author can always edit without review. A reviewer's decision is also not reviewed. Showing the post at the top of the question list allows the community to provide an element of informal review and raise any problems they see.

In essence, you don't trust the reviewers, post authors and editors with the ability?

Post authors without the ability should simply not have the ability to mark edits as minor on their own posts (result: bump).

For reviewers and editors with the ability, I think it's fair to simply trust them. That said, at least for the editors; they have already shown they know how to edit posts. For reviewers, the case is less simple: reviewing an edit actually isn't the same as writing an edit. But we should handle that elsewhere. For instance by having a separate review ability that requires completing test reviews beforehand (addition to current requirements).

Andreas witnessed the end of the world today‭ wrote 9 months ago · edited 9 months ago

Showing the post at the top of the question list allows the community to provide an element of informal review and raise any problems they see.

There's also another way to do this, which is less invasive. As I don't yet have the abilities required for reviewing, I have no idea where to go to find the review queues. I would expect it to be fairly easily available, such that if I'm curious, or have a need to go there, I can simply find the list of recent suggested edits, and look at their reviews. I should be able to go look at all the recent reviews, without actually partaking in that review. So not only should it be public, but also readily available, even to those without the ability to review.

That will let the community peer-review reviews without actually having them "pollute" the main top-level posts list.

Neither the editor nor the reviewer is well placed to decide

The editor, the reviewer, or both could be malicious, so allowing either of them to decide which edits should be hidden from the community is not appropriate.

This also applies to a post author editing their own post. A spammer should not be able to decide that an edit to their own post should be hidden.

Long game spammers can work in pairs to build up trust and then approve each other's edits. Getting past a single review is easy if you are in contact with a malicious reviewer. Getting past all of the eyes in the community is more challenging. Every edit needs to be available for the community to inspect.

For the most part, this shouldn't be a problem. As I wrote in the first comment, post authors without the reviewing ability should not be able to mark their edits as minor. Actually getting the ability to review, should require so much effort that it's unfeasible for a spammer. Also, there are other ways to

check their reviews. As I also said in the first comment, keep the list of all reviews (sort by most recent date) easily accessible to everyone. In addition, every now and then, submit their reviews for peer-reviews. So, review the review.

In addition, we can also introduce an edit reviewing ability with ladders. 3 stages, each stage gives 3 points. One edit suggestion requires 3 points to be accepted. Examples:

  • 3 stage 1 reviewers must accept the edit, or
  • 1 stage 1 + 1 stage 2 review must accept it, or
  • 2 stage 2 reviewers must accept it, or
  • 1 stage 3 reviewer must accept it.

Point is; there are many other ways to solve this than flooding the list of top-level posts with activity for minor edits.

Moshi‭ wrote 9 months ago · edited 9 months ago

This is more or less what I wrote in my post, yeah.

The review queue is entirely public; just click the Edits tab in the category

The review queue is entirely public; just click the Edits tab in the category

See, that's how stupid I can be. Or just blind. But my eyes work fine, so it must be stupidity. :D

TLDRBSTTEF (Too long, didn't read, but scrolled to the end first):

Choosing to design an ability system like was done here in the first place, is all about ensuring only the ones we can trust are granted the permissions they need to curate this site. If we have failed to select trustworthy members for that position, or fail to affirm their suitedness within the closed review systems, I'd say we have failed with the system as a whole.