Mike could have avoided that by just using the same account to edit his original post. You can always edit your own work without it going through the review process.
Mike could have avoided that by just using the same account to edit his original post. You can always edit your own work without it going through the review process.
Probably too late, but... If he ever decides to come back, he'll be able to edit his own posts without review.
The incompetence of the mods is relevant because it is one of the main criticism of TFA. It's a nice example of the Pete principle.
If a mod doesn't understand an answer he should just pass, not vote according to what's right most of the time. They are incompetent, both regarding LuaJIT and as moderators.
I'd expect mods familiar with Lua to recognize him, and he should have mod powers, to begin with.
Again, if he had just used his original account to edit his answer, he wouldn't have needed any of that.
He's a world class expert in compilers and high performance, low level programming on modern hardware.
This addresses the core point of the article, being that the SO "meritocracy" is badly implemented, and conflates heavy site usage with maturity and technical ability.
Edit: If not a mod status, a VIP status. SO would gain a lot if its staff were to individually recruit people as talented as he is.
If it allows it, and delegates the check to moderators, then these moderators should either reject it if they are sure the change is wrong. In all other cases they should allow it.
It's really that simple.
The heuristic they use is something along the lines of "only accept edits that are grammar fixes, equivalent thereof, or rewordings". Content changes without the authors consent are considered poor form.
That's irrelevant anyway, since that's not what happened here. The author of the post tried to edit his own answer with a second account. He should have just used his original account and this would have never happened.
Which is less wrong than an edit but it`s still wrong when the appropriate response is a comment.
A community can be judged by it`s responses to newbies. By this measure it fails miserably since the most common feedback many newbies get from SO are bare downvotes and rejections. What should happen is a polite response explaining the problem and the what should be done to correct it.
Once you've seen enough of this sort of thing -- and, again, especially on the highly popular sites there is a lot of it -- there's a certain fatigue which sets in; you get jaded, I suppose, and that seems from what I've seen to be the proximate cause for newbie questions getting downvoted to oblivion or flagged for closure without anyone taking a moment to advise the asker on what he should've done differently.
Is this ideal? Of course not; in fact, it's not even close, and I say that as someone who has considerable experience with the phenomenon so described. But Stack Exchange sites are moderated by volunteers, and you can't issue ukazes to volunteers without a significant risk of losing them -- after all, if you make them not want to do what they do, they'll just stop doing it.
In any case, just as a community can be judged by its attitude toward newbies, so can those newbies be judged by their attitude toward the community in which they attempt to participate. As in any other such case, it is entirely reasonable for those who have invested time and effort into Stack Exchange sites to expect that new users will deport themselves with respect for the rules and mores of the community.
With regard to giving the ability to comment to new and unregistered users, there's a problem similar to that of low-quality newbie questions; so to broaden the provision of commenting privilege would produce an instant and enduring deluge of spam. You really can't expect volunteers to handle sewage disposal, especially when the sewage is deep enough to require hip waders. Again, this is not ideal, but it is a consequence of the Stack Exchange model's basic assumptions, and I'd have to say that model has acquitted itself well enough in practice to vindicate the claims made on its behalf.