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See here.

This question had several reasonable edits made, which were then reverted entirely by the original poster in favor of transforming the question into something completely different. Attempts to restore the post by several users were met with rollbacks from the original poster. I'd like to know why?

Keep in mind that this is a collaboratively edited website, and by posting here you relinquish certain control over the content of the questions you post. Among them is your right to be the sole authority over what the content contains. Rolling back improvements (or attempted improvements) without comment is rude.

Further, editing a question to completely change it to a new question is never okay.

I'd like to be able to remove the lock on the post as soon as possible.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ This user has (since?) posted a bounty on a similar question. \$\endgroup\$
    – Fuzzy Logic
    Nov 3, 2015 at 4:44
  • \$\begingroup\$ I had flagged because the post gave the impression that the OP was trolling. \$\endgroup\$
    – SanSolo
    Nov 3, 2015 at 5:55
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Josh Petrie Now, I would like this question to be deleted since it's poorly written, has no answers, and because there's another similar question with an answer. \$\endgroup\$
    – user69956
    Nov 3, 2015 at 13:50
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Anonymous The system will delete certain poor-quality questions on its own; we don't generally do this proactively and I don't think this question qualifies as a case where we should. If it is duplicated by another question it should be flagged as a duplicate. \$\endgroup\$
    – user1430
    Nov 3, 2015 at 17:57

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I'm posting because I've kind of been involved in the 'war' you link to.

According to what I know about the practices of SE, is that the questions and answers rule. I noticed the question was changed so much that it 1) completely changed from it's original scope, and 2) was now completely out of scope of the question we like to have here.

Feeling that it was not correct, I felt that the correct thing to do was to roll back the edit and notify the OP via comment of why the rollback was done; it was all done under good faith that the OP of the question was not aware of this kind of 'rule'.

I was about to flag for mod intervention after the OP changed the focus of the question again when you rolled back the edit again.

This is what happened on my end, and from my point of view.

I'm not a moderator here, just a enthusiast who likes [gamedev.se].

I'm aware that I don't have the authority to tell users what to do, but I'm also aware that there are tools offered to the community to help maintain the philosophy of the site. I used the tools offered, up to a point that I felt it was time to leave the situation into a moderator's hands.

I'm well aware that I'm not perfect (and some might find me annoying). Have I done something wrong in this situation? If that's the case, I strive in my life to improve my behaviour, so I'd like feedback.

StackExchange offers a great way to reward users with the Reputation system. Unfortunately, however, this system only applies to Questions and Answers, not to other community maintenance features, so one is kind of lost when trying to know if he does well or not (with some parts of the moderation features).

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    \$\begingroup\$ I don't think you did anything wrong. Editing a question to make it a completely different question is unacceptable, especially if the question already has answers, so rolling that back was valid. The other edits made to the question were fine, I think, I mostly want to know why the original poster keeps trying to roll back the edits. \$\endgroup\$
    – user1430
    Nov 2, 2015 at 18:17
  • \$\begingroup\$ @JoshPetrie All right, thanks for the comment! \$\endgroup\$
    – Vaillancourt Mod
    Nov 2, 2015 at 18:20
  • \$\begingroup\$ Note that gamedev is visited by over-proportionally many newcomers among the SE forums, and hence, the SE philosophy of a collaboratively edited website that supersedes the original intention of the post, may seem strange at first. Certainly there is a lot of ego involved, where people feel that their game/project is their 'own' and thus the question itself. Possibly a solution could be to limit the number of rollbacks or edits until a certain reputation threshold, e.g. 100 points is reached. \$\endgroup\$
    – Majte
    Nov 2, 2015 at 23:20
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In my own experience when trying to solve an unfamiliar problem and having tutored many, when people do things like this it's because they don't know how to appropriately ask the question that they need answered. Especially given the disparity of the edits, it seems that the user in reference is confused.

I'm not suggesting that either party is wrong here, just making an observation. On one hand, the SE rules for not changing the nature of a question is perfectly valid. On the other hand a poorly worded question that does not address the user's intent is of no value to that user and likely not valuable to anybody else either.

I can see how this is frustrating to many posters who are already struggling to put into words what they inherently don't understand. It's clear that this nature of SE is one of the key causes of double-posted and/or abandoned questions, particularly when the question is locked/put on hold. The idea that SE is not a forum or a tutoring site is fine, but it can also be rather dismissive and discouraging.

In this particular case I would suggest the question be put on hold, request that the user refrain from making further edits for now and offer some avenue of assisting them, either by asking probing questions in the comments or referring/inviting them to the chat rooms.

A mentor system would be a welcome addition to SE for this type of situation, both for orientation with how SE works and to assist with specific problem domains. Regardless of the revision conflicts, it would help to raise the quality of many naive questions and improve user satisfaction.

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