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    “This can be compared to 13.79% of posts edited after inbox notifications were sent, an increase of over 10% in the percentage of posts edited (corresponding to our first goal).” - How exactly do you figure that it’s an increase of 10%? The difference between 12.53% and 13.79% is only a little over 1% increase.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Nov 17, 2020 at 10:23
  • 61
    @Ramhound 1 percentage point increase, but (13.79 - 12.53)/12.53 ~ 10.05% increase in the rate.
    – muru
    Commented Nov 17, 2020 at 10:24
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    I wish to add that while the effect on SO may be rather small, I expect this to have a much bigger impact on some other sites.
    – Wrzlprmft
    Commented Nov 17, 2020 at 10:26
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    @rene: Several reasons: A lower ratio of questions that are unsalvageable, fewer help vampires, people being more invested in their questions, more timely closure.
    – Wrzlprmft
    Commented Nov 17, 2020 at 10:40
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    @Wrzlprmft interesting theory (and I agree with your premise). I will try to dig into the data after the experiment to see how this plays out on SO vs non-SO sites. Commented Nov 17, 2020 at 10:42
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    @Ramhound: The probability of this difference occurring by chance is astronomically low (from scipy.stats import fisher_exact; fisher_exact([[5464,43619-5464],[5478,39724-5478]]) → 7·10⁻⁸). The more interesting question is whether the effect size was worth it.
    – Wrzlprmft
    Commented Nov 17, 2020 at 10:52
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    @YaakovEllis, Not directly, no. But if I've had a post closed and deleted, unless I have high enough rep, it disappears. I assume these notifications stay your inbox for atleast 6 months and include a link to the question? Wouldn't an indirect result of this be the ability to view the post past that 90 day cut-off?
    – ouflak
    Commented Nov 17, 2020 at 12:28
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    @Trilarion possible explanation: the email that goes out contains different instructions based on the close reason (similar to what is shown in the post notice). Perhaps the instructions given here lead to higher quality edits. But that is just conjecture. Commented Nov 17, 2020 at 12:30
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    @ouflak this is not changing anything about the ability to view close votes. Just adding a notification when the post is closed. Commented Nov 17, 2020 at 12:33
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    Can a 10k user screenshot Jeff Atwood's now-deleted original answer to the original question? I'd like to read about the thinking back then. This seems like such an essential feature.
    – pkamb
    Commented Nov 17, 2020 at 17:30
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    One of the other answers actually has nearly all of what Jeff says. i.sstatic.net/hycsI.png is what Jeff said, as he said it Commented Nov 17, 2020 at 17:50
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    @Trilarion Jeff's only wrong once you drastically change the audience that SO tries to serve. For the audience being served/targeted at the time, Jeff was very much right.
    – TylerH
    Commented Nov 17, 2020 at 22:07
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    Are four significant digits (e.g., 12.53%) warranted? The sample size alone would suggest a relative accuracy of about 0.5% (not percentage points) at best. Commented Nov 18, 2020 at 2:16
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    @JohnBollinger regarding the number of edits - yes, it was not so many more. But every little bit counts. More than that - this is a feature that has been requested by users for a long time, and given that we vastly expanded our notifications system in the last year (to include followers, reopen), we were interested in this as well. We did however want to make sure that it was pushing things in the right direction. Commented Nov 18, 2020 at 6:45
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    A percentage of a percentage increase is not a useful measure, usually only used when somebody wants to present something as performing better than it actually did.
    – OrangeDog
    Commented Nov 19, 2020 at 11:07