When I review edit proposals, I often see users who try to edit the question just to add a link to . Usually the explanation for the edit is something like "added fiddle".  First of all, as I don't use SO for JavaScript as much, it took me a while to understand the point of this site (the edit proposers certainly did not make it clear).  Second, I don't see the point of constantly linking to Fiddle or similar services. SO is, after all, a site for discussing programming questions, and not a site for collaborative coding. There are also issues associated with outsourcing part of the question to websites that SO has no control over, that previous questions have brought up already.  Personally, I try to ask my questions so that they can be answered from reading alone, and require as little actual coding for the answerer as possible (that's not to say I don't welcome or am not grateful for anyone taking the time to produce a solution by experimenting).  Also, there is the question of consistency. I use SO for C# quite a bit - there are online C# compilers, but I don't think I've ever seen a question link to one (as if to invite answerers to tinker with the code). If I start accepting every edit that merely adds a  JSFiddle link, that implies that I should also edit every code question I see to link to an online compiler. That would be a ton of work, and it seems like that would only serve to clutter the site.  So far I have rejected these edits (too minor or spam). My question(s):   Why do people edit questions and add JSFiddle links? How should such edits be handled?   I am asking specifically about edits, which only add a JSFiddle link. If a question author wants to include a JSFiddle, we can consider that outside the scope of my question.
121512
Today I saw a  that just added a JSFiddle to the question. I didn't know whether we have have to approve or reject them, so I .  replied that I could ask it on Meta, so that's what I do now.  Do we have to approve or reject suggested edits that only add a JSFiddle link?
70992
I would say a quarter to half my questions end up getting edited the vast majority of which end up dramatically changing the context of my question. I'm not against good advice (I've acted on about 2% of all the criticisms I have ever had about my work since they were actually thoughtful) though I think since I joined overflow sites years after I've had a good grip on most of the material I work with people are seeing low reputation and presuming that equates to low levels of comprehension.  Regardless of the reasoning behind people making edits is there an option I can use that would require my approval in order to commit an edit to my questions?   I have no interest in spamming questions in order to artificially boost my reputation. I am getting tired of having to add bullet points telling people to ask for clarifications instead of editing my posts. Having to correct my posts so often reduces my desire to ask the question if I have to review the question again (even with the revision pages available). As this is a discussion there is no reason to edit this post, I will be happy to revise my own if you leave comments as I actively follow questions I participate in though the office of redundancy redundancy requires that I state I know what I am asking.   For example, say I post about Kubuntu (which by default uses KDE) and someone edits it changing the OS to Ubuntu (which uses Gnome by default). Then, answers become Gnome-oriented for a KDE question and the entire context has been changed--negating the point of asking the question in the first place.
29697
Some questions might be asked on three different sites, each site needing three different answers. For example, a question about a text editor.  So perhaps there should be a way to link the questions on the three different sites. Adding a link manually in the questions is certainly possible, but perhaps a feature officially supporting this will be beneficial.
116558
I know this , but obviously there's still something that keeps this from being implemented/fixed.  I am a pretty active editor on Stack&nbsp;Overflow. In fact, I do edit a lot more questions than I answer. I have the Strunk-and-White badge, and if that one would stack I would have it several times by now. I am pretty high-rep — in short: I know what I'm doing.  Still.  When a question has been edited by someone whose edit needs approval, I cannot "instant-approve" his edit. Why on earth should another user be needed to approve my decision?  I know, if I go to "improve", I can overwrite the suggested edit. But that's not what I want. Especially if the edit is good, why should I take credit for it?  If I click "approve" instead, the system doesn't even let me "improve" the edit anymore. Seriously, this makes no sense at all.
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I just edited  that contained some code that was overall neat and correct, but wouldn't compile. I made it compile clean and (in my opinion) more readable.  The edit got rejected as too minor, because during my edit the OP made the code compile-clean in the grace period and thus in the diff that shows up to the reviewers, only the parts making the code more readable showed up. Such an edit is a too minor one, without question.  In my opinion there are two possibilities to solve this kind of "conflict":   When user A has edited a post and user B (>2k rep, or original author) has edited that post in the meantime user A gets a message that the post has changed and is asked to revise that edit based on the changes made in the meantime. The easier one: Don't allow edit suggestions in the grace period.   I don't care about the missing reputation I would have gotten if the suggestion had been approved. I just don't like my suggestions being reviewed on a false basis - because the diff that is displayed to the approvers does not display the correct edit.  Doing a quick search here on meta I found some questions maybe related to this problem - none of them however addresses the problem of the review based on incorrect diffs:
112963
Having been fairly active on Stack Overflow's suggested edit review queue in the past couple of years, I observe that there are a number of worthwhile suggested edits that get rejected because they change more than the form of an answer. But that's wrong — edits that make an answer more correct should be accepted. To give at least one example: a few days ago, I caught a  that already had one rejection. But this edit was right. I know because this was my own answer; I'd probably typed the code directly into my browser, and someone came along, tried running the code, and fixed a few syntax errors. This isn't an isolated case, though I find it hard to search for examples (a vast majority of edits are either obviously bad or on subjects where I don't know enough to judge). In the example I cite, I wouldn't have had my mistake pointed out if I hadn't happened to look through the edit queue at that particular time.  would help, but that's not the whole answer. Users with the edit privilege can go and fix a mistake in any post. Suggested edits are meant to give that power to anyone, with supervision. Related prior discussion: , which strangely seemed to discourage edits that improve the content of a post. This comes up again and again on Meta Stack Overflow (). Yet the guidelines for  and  clear state that you should edit out minor mistakes:  When should I edit posts? Any time you see a post that needs improvement and are inclined to suggest an edit, you are welcome to do so. The original author of a question or answer may always edit their own post, regardless of reputation level. (…)  To correct minor mistakes or add updates as the post ages     When shouldn't I comment? (…)  Suggesting corrections that don't fundamentally change the meaning of the post; instead, make or suggest an edit;   How can we strive to get worthwhile improvements past the suggested edit review? In particular, how do we educate Stack Overflow participants (I think this attitude is more prevalent on SO) that it is ok, and even encouraged, to correct minor mistakes in answers?
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Should edits with only minor code improvements be accepted. As an example, I'm reviewing an edit that changes all double quotes to single quotes and renames a variable in some javascript. With the exception of the variable rename (which is not entirely necessary), the edit is frivolous. Should I accept on the merits of a debatable variable name change?
112880
What this question is about:  It occurred to me that even experienced users occasionally forget that they either:    received viable answers to existing questions or  need to edit existing questions to get more appropriate answers.   What this question is not about:   I'm not suggesting that we badger "or otherwise nudge" users into accepting answers to their questions, as per this discussion:  I'm not duplicating the discussions about reminding/educating new users to accept answers to their questions, as discussed here:  and elsewhere.   My personal rationale:  I suspect that OPs occasionally hesitate to accept an answer in hope that someone will later post a better answer even though there may already be acceptable answers provided. I know that I have done this in the past and then forgotten about my question, only to remember months or years later that I hadn't yet accepted a viable answer to my question.  For busy people, it's inconvenient to go through your activity history and find the question with the upvoted answer that still was never accepted. The inconvenience factor is enough of a deterrent that busy people don't always do it.   My proposal:  For a question with unaccepted answers for over a year, could we please alert the OP with a link (this is the key feature) to their question with a suggestion to perhaps review their question to edit it if no acceptable answers have been provided (or something like that)?  Perhaps there could be other criteria to prevent obnoxious reminders, such as the question needing to have at least 3 suggested answers or that the suggested answers must have been upvoted at least 3 times or that the question has been upvoted at least once or something like that.
43605
Over the past couple of days there have been a few questions about overlapping proposals and questions that could belong on multiple sites:        What is the best practice before / after asking a question if you think your question might be better on another site?  or  If I think my question might belong on multiple sites as per the above posts?
1598
There are times when I'd like to communicate something to the Stack Overflow community but it doesn't fit a question.  Right now, I have the product of many answers (a bunch of code) I'd like to share back but can't.  If each user had a blog or wiki (or something) they could create articles / blogs on and then link the related SO questions to it. You could then add an icon to those questions to show there is also more expansive information available.  By linking to the questions, this means anyone could author articles addressing a question outside of the scope of the more simple Q/A scenario.  Of course, many people have blogs but they must link that in a not so immersive fashion and not everyone has a blog (and also many blogs are inadequate in displaying text from a coding viewpoint (e.g. formatting code). Folding such a mechanism into SO would open up all sorts of creative opportunities and make the site even more sticky for users.  I think it's a winner and I'd use it for sure.
101712
I know this has been noted before, but it's amazing how often people ask questions about code that's not working without sharing the code. And when they share code, it's often insufficient (which makes sense, because often if you can't solve a problem, it's often because you're looking in the wrong place). I'd like to suggest that we work harder to steer people away from abstract theoretical programming questions to more pragmatic, concrete situations. Anyway, I'd like to propose:   Can we update  to more strongly encourage the use of including code samples? Right now it simply says "We feel the best Stack Overflow questions have a bit of source code in them". Maybe strengthen that by preceding that sentence with something like: "If you are having problems with your code, always provide source code samples." Or maybe even better "If you are having problems with your code, always provide comprehensive source code samples."  Can we update  to reflect this, too? Right now that page says nothing about source code samples.  In the spirit of the "who reads the FAQ", perhaps we should tweak the the actual  page, too. There is a box titled "How to Ask" - "Is your question about programming?" that says "Provide details. Share your research." Maybe tweak this to also say "Include source code."   I just don't get the mindset of "let's not help them up front, but just tell them when they get it wrong." Waste of the OP's time. Waste of ours. Seems like there's a strong mindset to defend the status quo, rather than seriously considering ways to improve it.
15180
There are many links posted in answers, and some in questions, that are either stale or broken.  An example is the change to  on-line documentation this year to do away with separate 'Optional' and 'Core' tasks areas in the documentation - the old links 404 now.  I've fixed a bunch of 'optionaltasks' broken links, but searching for 'coretasks' in Stack&nbsp;Overflow questions returns over 300 matches...  Are there any tools for us to review and fix these - with an emphasis on the fixing - without sifting through completely manually?  Is it time for some refactoring tools for Stack&nbsp;Overflow content, in particular, for links?  Also, I'd be interested to know if there is an analysis of links (as found in the Stack&nbsp;Overflow data dumps) out there. Answer: there is a  of a sample of links and images, but it's getting a bit out-of-date.
70056
I see ads to other SE sites regularly on the sidebar of SO. Are these questions chosen by hand, or algorithmically? The reason I ask is that there was an ad pointing to  on Seasoned Advice. I'm all for a good laugh I suppose, but is this the kind of question that should be highlighted?  It's obviously a thriving community, but if this were my first exposure to that community, and I saw that the highest-rated answer -- from the user with the highest reputation -- was (and I paraphrase only lightly):  &quot;Why yes, there is tool that can cut cherry tomatoes in half.  It's fantastic for the job.  It's called a freakin' KNIFE!&quot;  would I ever want to visit again, let alone ask a question over there? First impressions count for a lot, and that one missed the mark IMHO. If the selection method is algorithmic, I suppose there's no reliable way to detect sarcasm in a highly-rated answer, but if it's manual, weeeellllllllll ... :)
7226
I was on the Suggested Edit's review tab today, and noticed that this user (take a look at today's ), was putting in hundreds of edits adding the C# tag to questions that didn't really need it. He got over 275 reputation today.   To me, this looked like spamming the edit system to get reputation. I started rejecting them as too minor, with also a custom message telling him this.   Here's one example:  Another:  Another:    And about 20-30 more. I hit my review cap for the day.  Is this valid editing behavior, and, if not, would a mod please get involved?  UPDATE: I've seen a couple of other meta questions about this in the last day, but it looks like the spike in gaming the system is passed.
89935
I am wondering where is a good place or how is a good way to ask a question on what software tools to use for a specific task.  A lot of the time when searching for information on these types of problems stackoverflow comes up with the top and actually useful discussions and answers, but the question is locked.  I completely understand the point of discouraging "best of" or list questions as discussed in this question () and agree they often aren't constructive enough to justify the effort in moderating them.  What I am wondering is where is the right place to have a discussion like this? Stackoverflow has a good and active community so perhaps there is another section or related site I can ask less specific questions. And I do find some value in reading people's opinions, even if subjective on issues like this.  Here are some examples of the kind of questions I mean:    and   First results in google when searching for those subjects and some useful discussion.  Perhaps asking a question like this but with a strict and detailed specification it might be considered a valid and reasonable question to ask on stackoverflow; perhaps it's just a case of re-thinking how to ask a question. Or perhaps there's a more relevant place for this kind of discussion. Please let me know what you think.
44113
Take , and note the description:     Proposed Q&amp;A site for professional and expert amateur chefs interested in the more subjective aspects of cooking; this would be to Cooking SE as Programmers SE is to Stack Overflow    It seems like  is MASSIVELY popular (has more views per-day than any other proposal by a factor of almost 2). There's also a .  Should we allow this trend to continue, possible resulting in things like a subjective web applications proposal? It seems like almost ANY proposal's users could benefit from having a place to ask subjective questions, seeing how much the subjective programmers proposal took off, how many good questions are asked and closed as subjective, and how many successful blogs and discussion sites there are.  But it seems like having totally different sites for this is wrong, as they would share no more official connection between them than with a gaming and skateboarding proposal. If they could be linked somehow, at the least like Stack&nbsp;Overflow and Server&nbsp;Fault are linked as part of a trilogy, they could both be more prosperous.   Another idea would be having a subjective version of every site (subjective.blah.com, like every site has a meta.blah.com). This would be a great way to link the two, and the separation would still be there as it. Heck we could even do it with the existing trilogy sites, with a 'belongs on subjective' auto-move feature like 'belongs on meta'. It's obvious that people want to ask subjective questions. The issue at hand is how (or if) we choose to enable them to do that with the Stack&nbsp;Exchange model. This is a much more long term issue that will need heavy discussion before any consensus can be reached.  EDIT: I see this question proposed something like this for polls. What I am proposing is a separate dominion for all questions that are valid except for being subjective. Hence every site could have a normal section, a subjective section, and a chat section. This may seem complicated, but IMHO it's a great way to divide up a topic. There would be a place to answer questions, discuss topics, and just talk. As far as I can see this covers every area users would be concerned with, leading to a one-stop site that would provide good organization for all areas of a topic.  Thoughts? (sorry for the big wall of text ;)
54361
After rolling it out to the International Stack Overflow sites last week, we're rolling out the new ask page to the whole network today. The new page was designed with the goal of helping new askers by more readily presenting them with tips on how to improve their question. This is a combination of the &quot;Ask a question wizard&quot; (that was tested on Stack Overflow) and the current standard &quot;ask a question&quot; page. You can read more about it . The /questions/ask/advice page has been replaced by a new modal for first-time askers, and the flow is now broken down into two steps: drafting the question, and reviewing the question — so no more random warnings triggering when you switch from the tag to the title field, while others only show up if you actually try to post. And as the blog post notes, there's also an informational modal at the end, so new askers know what to expect once they've asked their question. Enough words, here's what it looks like... (click on the images to see the larger versions) Welcome modal for new askers:  Drafting a question:   Reviewing a question, with errors (shown inline) and warnings (shown on the right side):   Reviewing a question, without errors:  What's per-site customizable, and what's the procedure to get it live? As you can see, any existing custom guidance on &quot;How to ask,&quot; &quot;How to tag,&quot; or any custom error or warning messages your site may already have in place will still be there, and will still be customizable with the same restraints (basic HTML, using paragraphs, lists, links) as before:  The &quot;welcome modal&quot; for new askers (seen with the default text in screenshot 1), everything between the title and &quot;Before you post...&quot; (this is only custom on 4 sites at the moment, ). The full contents of the &quot;Draft your question&quot; sidebar (seen with the default text in screenshot 2, and with custom text in screenshot 3). The text in the tag popover, between &quot;Tags help the right people...&quot; and the bullet points (seen with custom text in screenshot 2, and with the default text on screenshot 3). The above three have no character limits, aside from &quot;within reason.&quot; The placeholder text in the title field (text only; seen with the default text in screenshot 2, and with custom text on screenshot 3). The warning text shown in the &quot;Review your question&quot; sidebar, regex-based (seen with the default text in screenshot 4, and with custom text on screenshot 5). Tag-related error messages and warnings, regex-based (seen with custom error text in screenshot 4, with the default text on screenshot 5,  and with a tag warning ). The warning and error messages described in the two bullet points above have a limit of 1000 characters.  These can only be edited by staff, so the process to get them live is as described :  Create a Meta post on the appropriate Meta site, and discuss it with your community. Once a consensus is reached, a mod should escalate it to the CM team. Generally speaking, the &quot;contact us&quot; form is the best way to go, though a ping in chat can sometimes work too (the most that could happen is we ask you to use the form). Unless there are any outstanding issues, the CMs should be able to get to it Soon™.   This has been live on Stack Overflow for a while now, and like I mentioned at the beginning of the post, we're rolling this out to the rest of the network now. If you have any questions or see anything that has broken on your site, please let us know — we'll be actively monitoring and responding to this post until March 10th. After that, if you have a bug or specific request, start a new post and tag it with  and  or  :)