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In Do we care about edit flooding? Should we be doing anything?, Jeff Atwood mentioned:

Edits should be reasonably substantive -- trivial edits have all the negatives but almost none of the positives. For example, the 6 character guideline we use for suggested edits is a good starting point.

However, it seems to became a habit for some users (and I do feel like helping, but am afraid that it's going to make the problem I see on the other hand much worse) to re-upload large batches of images to stack.imgur in order to prevent future image rot.

Now, a rule to good content I recently learned is to go for quality instead of quantity; avoid trivial stuff...

However, preventing image rot is there to maintain quality but it happens with quantity. So, it's kind of an exception to what I recently learned; it does feel trivial on one hand, although some titles/tags/content are sometimes corrected along the way.


Whenever I'm around, I see an edit flood all over the front page. But it feels like this is getting annoying, and I'm starting to wonder if it's leading people away from our site. Too much edit flooding can never be good. Of course the person in question is trying to do good; been there, done that with my earlier top question title edits.

Now, those edits are heavily supported on chat and I would even like to jump in and help. But, all I would do is make the flood of edits on the front page much worse; should we be have an automatized system that automatically silently uploads everything to stack.imgur?

If not, can we get something like the interesting tab on Stack Overflow that doesn't lay so much focus on edit floods? It has proven to work there; so, why wouldn't it work on a site like Super User? I've heard volume once before, but I could say that the Super User side is heavily visited these days and should thus be enough to fit the bill of a (perhaps improved) interesting tab.

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    Agreed, preventing image rot is far more a higher quality flood than removing three letters from a post
    – random Mod
    Aug 22, 2011 at 13:53
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    You're going to run into problems where images don't link to an image per se, but rather a HTML site that displays them. Quite a number of those "cheap" uploading services did (or still do) that.
    – slhck
    Aug 22, 2011 at 13:54
  • @slhck: That's simply a check on whether the URL ends with the right extension or not. Aug 22, 2011 at 13:57
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    I know, but it wouldn't solve the problem, so you'd have to go through these manually.
    – slhck
    Aug 22, 2011 at 13:59
  • @random: To stay on theme with your latest revisions: "why you got to be so mean (and a liar, and ...)" Aug 22, 2011 at 13:59
  • @slhck: You are talking about a very small % of the entire collection here... Aug 22, 2011 at 14:00
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    @TomWijsman Simple image extension check won't help. Imageshack does the same, and their image html pages have extensions ending with image files
    – Sathyajith Bhat Mod
    Aug 22, 2011 at 14:02
  • @Sathya: They do not... img28.imageshack.us/img28/976/boulderdashepisodeivroc.jpg Aug 22, 2011 at 14:10
  • I think implementing the Interesting tab would be a good solution for this. I do not think that a batch operation would be good. There are times when you don't want the image uploaded - for example, SE flair - where the image might change, and you want it to change if it does. Uploading the image statically would break that.
    – nhinkle
    Aug 22, 2011 at 14:14
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    @Tom they can: imageshack.us/photo/my-images/714/geepy.jpg
    – Gareth
    Aug 22, 2011 at 14:18
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    @Gareth: That doesn't work in an image Markdown; so, they do not... :) Aug 22, 2011 at 14:21
  • @nhinkle: Yeah, best solution I can come up with, given that there are those odd images (you could however filter /flair/) that might be dynamically updated; but I doubt if posts containing such images are really of any use... Aug 22, 2011 at 14:22
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    @Tom that's the point though - I've come across posts where they've just added a link like that, and it's obviously better to add the image inline. It's not impossible to automate that, but definitely a bit tricky!
    – Gareth
    Aug 22, 2011 at 14:47

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I went from not really caring one way or another to having a strong opinion on this.

Quite frankly, whist both of the solutions are perfectly good ones, I would suggest that a much better third option is to implement the idea I had!

It may have got downvoted like crazy on MSO, but, I am starting to get really fed up of question after question here, and all the arguments on chat about it.

I don't want to take anyone's side so... I will give a negative to everyone (and everyone can equally hate me!).

I have to say that I disagree with @Random's comment and what @Jeff Atwood said to my question - if in any answer of mine, I have made a spelling mistake (and I know there are many where I have) - I would love for someone to make a small edit. This both makes me look better and it gives the site a higher quality. I do not know of anyone who wouldn't want a genuine mistake of their's corrected.

(Whilst this is an exaggerated comment... Would you want to see a site all in 1337speak ? ... The more mistakes, the worse quality the site looks.)

And now to the editors - I hate the flood! It is so frustrating to see old answered, popular or similar questions on the front page... but I put up with it for the greater good of the site.

As to the people who say that you can just use the /questions button... I know that there is /questions, but, this is a questions and answer website, the front page should be for new content... you don't go to a news paper website and see all old stories and click a link for the new ones!

One point I want to say again from previous places I have written it... I don't know what makes people want to look through so many posts and correct tiny mistakes, but, if they are willing to do it, by all means let them.

The edit ability is a good ability, but to an edit of my earlier idea perhaps a new option could be a privilege based on 25k (or higher, or selectively given (if possible)) which is "Silent Edit". I want to be clear (in case anyone misunderstood my previous suggestion), this is not "Stealth Edit", it will keep a full log - everyone is accountable, it will simply not bump edits on the front page.

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  • What about a different tab for edits? And a way to give feedback to bad edits in a polite way? Aug 29, 2011 at 22:58
  • @Tom Wijsman, I think I said a similar solution to Jeff in that Meta Post (or I mentioned it somewhere)... As I said, as long as people are accountable, I do not see the problem. Again, if I write "wont" somewhere instead of "won't" (quickest example!), I don't see why someone shouldn't be able to edit it - but, I don't want it bumped to the front page... Aug 29, 2011 at 23:03
  • Yeah, spelling corrections (more than one) in a old very highly viewed question are one of the many examples where a question shouldn't really be bumped but it is worth the edit because the question has frequent visits... Aug 29, 2011 at 23:06

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