8

I don't really care when someone edits my answers, but it grinds my gears when someone sloppily edits my answers.

So, why was this edit approved?

https://movies.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/47214

First, you never put a city's name in quotes. Second, it really is the "Sears Tower", not the "Sear's Tower". Lastly, almost every other edit wasn't an edit at all, but a re-typing of my exact words.

The only edit that might seem legit is putting the movie's name in italics, but that shouldn't have passed the "insignificant edit" rejection reason.

6
  • just FYI: "insignificant edit" is no longer a reject reason; the bar is now "zero improvement at all". The "retyping" is actually removing the extra spaces between your sentences, which you can see if you compare the markdown. The quotes around the city name are probably wrong, though.
    – KutuluMike
    Commented Aug 28, 2016 at 1:53
  • 1
    The same person made an invalid edit to the question, which I rolled back. I considered rolling back the edit to your answer, but in the end I didn't because at least one thing (the italicisation of the film name) was actually an improvement.
    – Rand al'Thor
    Commented Aug 28, 2016 at 13:43
  • @rand what's invalid about that edit? Style differences at best. Let's not go overboard with this...
    – cde
    Commented Aug 28, 2016 at 15:49
  • @cde Exactly, just style differences. It should have been rejected as "no improvement whatsoever".
    – Rand al'Thor
    Commented Aug 28, 2016 at 15:51
  • @rand in that case your roll back should be rejected as no improvement whatsoever as well. Considering the edit hit the review queue and was approved as suggested by two other users. So 3 people thought it was helpful. This is how edit wars start. Let's keep rollback to harmful edits...
    – cde
    Commented Aug 28, 2016 at 15:55
  • @cde I see your point, but at least my rollback reverted the post to the OP's style, which should be the default unless it can be improved significantly.
    – Rand al'Thor
    Commented Aug 28, 2016 at 15:58

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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The suggested edit screen is misleading. The edits doesn't show the double spaces that were removed which gets combined with the word immediately following them making it seem like retype words, or the change from a dumb single quote to a fancy single quote mark. It also doesn't include the edit improvement made by Steelerfan to correct the Sear's to Sears.

The edit correctly changed this to that, and imho it's a correct use of quotation marks for the city name, to signify it's nature as a fictional name for a generic composite city.

So the end result is better than it looks at first glance. It wasn't blindly approved, it was Improve Edit approved.

The edit may be minor copy editing, but the title italics put it past the trivial edit (not that the trivial edit rule is enforced much on any site unless someone is editing many many questions at a time).

6
  • So double-spacing is considered an error?? That is what I was taught in school, I've used it all my life. Anyone looking for any of the Edit badges can probably get it from correcting my questions and answers alone.
    – Johnny Bones
    Commented Aug 28, 2016 at 10:57
  • 2
    @JohnnyBones Punctuation is a matter of style and preference. There is no hard-and-fast rule on it. I think the most important thing is correcting double spacing to single spacing is not wrong. From around 1950, single sentence spacing became standard in books, magazines and newspapers, and the majority of style guides that use a Latin-derived alphabet as a language base now prescribe or recommend the use of a single space after the concluding punctuation of a sentence..
    – Rathony
    Commented Aug 28, 2016 at 13:19
  • @JohnnyBones single-spacing after periods has generally been the accepted standard for electronic text; the double-spacing convention was primarily to work around issues with typesetting and typewriters. Unfortunately, lots of schools are 50+ years behind on things.
    – KutuluMike
    Commented Aug 28, 2016 at 13:33
  • And I happen to be 50. :o) So, yeah, in High School typing class (circa 1983), we were taught to use double-spacing, and I've always done so since then.
    – Johnny Bones
    Commented Aug 28, 2016 at 14:27
  • 1
    Double spaces aren't wrong, just unusual. But double spaces dp have a function on SE. Add them to the end of a line followed by a new line in a quote will produce a line break. Otherwise it won't be treated as a new line.
    – cde
    Commented Aug 28, 2016 at 15:51
  • 1
    Thank you for that last little tidbit. I just learned a bit more SE markdown.
    – Erik
    Commented Aug 30, 2016 at 0:12

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