Stack Overflow now accept anonymous edits | Hacker News Reader

Stack Overflow now accept anonymous edits

blog.stackoverflow.com

45 pointssams9918 comments

Think maybe they're feeling a little heat from Quora? I'm not saying Quora is competing with them right now, but this seems like a pretty well-timed pre-emptive strike.

Glad to see it though, I use Stack Overflow way more than I use Quora.

Doesn't quora target a different audience than stack overflow? Stack overflow goes for more long tail questions for people who program while quora goes for general questions?

Stack Overflow may focus on people who program, but through Stack Exchange they are trying to diversify into Q&A for any topic. It seems inevitable there will be some overlap with Quora, and right now it looks like they're in a land-grabbing phase.

Here's how Joel Spolsky of StackOverflow positions it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2140871

well, not exactly -- you can't do ANYTHING on Quora as an anonymous user. On a Stack Exchange site, you could always ask and answer as an anon user. Now you can suggest edits, too.

I'm so thankful for this. I can finally fix up all those irritating spelling mistakes and gramatical errors in the new questions section.

It was infuriating to read poorly worded, badly spelt questions and not be able to do anything about it.

From the original post:

To prevent noise and friction, your change must be more than 6 characters

So, unfortunately, some of those infuriating typos will not be possible to fix. Reducing noise has benefits, but it also seems like these trivial errors are perfect for casual users to spot and fix. And it's possible that noise will actually be increased by people making spurious changes to cross the 6 character threshold.

But those little changes are also where opinion comes into play a lot of the time — minor punctuation niggles, regional spelling differences, two spaces at the beginning of a sentence, etc.

People really will suggest very odd, highly subjective edits. I rejected one yesterday where a new-ish user wanted to add "Thanks" at the end of somebody else's question.

Slightly strange - I made an "anonymous edit" - well answered a question - mid way through last week after wandering over to Stack Overflow to take a look at what was going on there after reading the post here related to someone complaining that the site was somehow working against new users.

As I was able to make a contribution without even joining I just concluded that the complaining poster had somehow got it all wrong. I even got some sort of SO karma. There was no "moderation" in place either - my response (well two of them as I went back with some detailed and related info later) went straight onto the question "page".

The complaint was, as far as I understand it, that new users can not comment on an answer, they can only add a new answer.

It was also from somebody whose goal was apparently not so much to help as to get more reputation and the most highly-rated answer.

The complaint was also that established users could post a quick reply to a question and then go back and edit that initial (highly placed) response to add detail to gain karma. I was able to post a response, go back and edit it with more detail and then return with a related response - all without joining. Perhaps that was evidence of some initial trials that have resulted in the announcement in the headline post.

The complaint wasn't that established users could do that, but that they were doing that -- getting in quickly with broad-stroke, nearly content-free answers for placement, then expanding later. It's a good game strategy, but it does put the longer, more detailed initial answers either far down the list (or, if there are enough people playing that game in a particular niche, preventing them altogether).

The main complaint, though, was with the inability to comment. Why add a separate answer when there's one there already that only needs a minor caveat or qualification? Not everybody who wants to contribute where they can is interested in collecting reputation points; comments require fifty rep and edits used to require 2K. Anonymous edits provides that sort of repless contribution opportunity (the rep points would go to the original contributor).

[edited for grammar, perhaps inadequately]

You've always been able to edit your own questions and answers to your heart's content. It's other people's content that everybody's getting a (moderated) crack at now.

The guy complaining about SO seemed to be ignoring that he was capable of this as well (I think the implication was that it requires such speed that it's only practical for nutcases who hang out at SO all day), but he certainly could have done the same.

Answering a question and editing are different things. Suggesting edits means changing someone else's question or answer.

If you did suggest an edit, it didn't actually take effect immediately. It just looked like it did. You see your own edit as if it occurred, but nobody else does until the edit is approved by others.

Props on figuring out a way to incentivize edits. I've been working on a similar idea but this one is pretty elegant.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com