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Is there a way to edit a question without bumping it to the front page?

On Super User today, there was a tiny disagreement in chat about mass editing spamming the front page and to deal with it, and there appears to be two Meta Questions (1 and 2).

As lots of previous suggestions regarding third party acceptance and similar matters have been downvoted/disagreed heavily about due to people saying that "only the question asker knows what they want", I do not see why third party edits should give the privilege(?) of "bumping" a question.

There have been so many times when a simple edit such as correcting a few spellings or spots of bad grammar have pushed a question to the top... but, nothing in the actual question has changed in any way.

So, I think my suggestion is pretty clear - do not "bump" questions on edits.

In addition, there are times when a question asker will genuinely add more information/context to a question... for these situations, I think that either edits by the original person should still act in the same way - or, better still, give a box or an option to allow bumping - this would mean if someone just wants to correct their errors, they can - without bothering anyone else on the site!

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    I think the main reason this hasn't been added is that bumping exposes edits to people so that they can revert changes if they're malicious. Removing the bump would make unnoticed vandalism too easy. I'd like a better solution too, but don't have a good idea.
    – Jeremy
    Commented Aug 11, 2011 at 23:39
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    Sorry to be naive, Have there been malicious edits? If there have been, perhaps the edit privilege needs to be higher and then have people who approve edits be a bit more careful :/
    – William Hilsum
    Commented Aug 11, 2011 at 23:41
  • I'm not personally aware of any. I don't think it's a common problem now, but the worry is that if edits weren't noticeable, it would become a problem.
    – Jeremy
    Commented Aug 11, 2011 at 23:44
  • What if there was a way of splitting it out at least, making it configurable in some way? You could have a separate "recent revisions" tab or something similar, or allow edits to be optionally removed from the front page. I can see the advantage of having a stream of recent edits in obvious view, as it allows some moderation to take place, but at the same time it's putting 'volume editors' like me in the fire for making large numbers of edits.
    – Gareth
    Commented Aug 11, 2011 at 23:44
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    You have Active and Newest. Just look at Newest.
    – random
    Commented Aug 11, 2011 at 23:46
  • @random that's what I pointed out in chat, but I was told how "important" the front page is, and nobody likes using Newest... apparently. That's what made sense to me if you were only interested in seeing new questions.
    – Gareth
    Commented Aug 11, 2011 at 23:46
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    Your question assumes a Wild West without moderation. There are moderators. Flag it.
    – Uphill Luge
    Commented Aug 11, 2011 at 23:49
  • Currently on Super User (Where i am mostly) You need 2K rep to do edits without approval - isn't that plenty high enough to realize how we operate on the site?\
    – Simon Sheehan
    Commented Aug 11, 2011 at 23:49
  • @Gareth / Random - I know about that... and I do not really mind one way or another - I asked this to settle the meta/chat stuff... but, if I had to pick one, I think that the front page should be newest/relevant questions and I don't think that changing a few letters around should bump...
    – William Hilsum
    Commented Aug 11, 2011 at 23:53
  • @Hans Passant - How does it!, please explain a little more? ... I trust the site and again, I do not really think that a small change should allow a question to be bumped... but... again, I don't mind if this one doesn't pass - I just think the site would be better with it!
    – William Hilsum
    Commented Aug 11, 2011 at 23:54
  • possible duplicate of Is there a way to edit a question without bumping it to the front page?, Closes / Edits Should Not Bump Questions on "Recent" List
    – Cody Gray - on strike
    Commented Aug 12, 2011 at 0:08
  • I'm confused about these votes. Do the upvotes mean "Yes I agree, these should not be bumped" or "Yes, these should be bumped"?
    – John
    Commented Aug 12, 2011 at 3:47

2 Answers 2

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There are really two issues here

  1. Edits should be reasonably substantive -- trivial edits have all the negatives but almost none of the positives. For example, the 6 character guideline we use for suggested edits is a good starting point.

  2. You don't need to be too protective of the front page; remember that the questions link will show you just the newest questions and it is very prominently linked, e.g.

    http://superuser.com versus https://superuser.com/questions

Notice the difference?

I definitely do not support a "trivial edit" or "hidden edit" flag. All edits need to be vetted by the community, and hiding them is not the right way to accomplish this goal.

There should be a nice blend of bumped questions on the homepage naturally anyway:

  • new questions
  • questions with new answers
  • answers with new edits
  • questions with new edits

And so forth. If you want to see just the incoming new questions, https://superuser.com/questions is one link away.

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    I just feel that the front page should be "prestigious", and it is weird having a tag edit from a 2 year old question appear at the top! Why are edits not given their own page and the home page being for new questions? ... Anyway, once again, I'm losing here, so, guess people don't agree with me!
    – William Hilsum
    Commented Aug 12, 2011 at 9:40
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    if necessary, just make sure people know about /questions and to click the big giant button on the page that says "QUESTIONS"
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Aug 12, 2011 at 14:33
  • I have gone from not really caring down to feeling strong about it now! It is a Q and A site! It is about Questions, Why should we have to go to /questions to see them! As for vetted by the community... editing is a privilege, you either trust people or you don't - if you are worried, increase the rep needed for this, but, if you changed it so edits had their own page (isn't there a mod tool for this anyway?) Then it still isn't really an issue and people can then make small changes (spelling etc.) without annoying anyone! (no need for 6 character minimum edits!)
    – William Hilsum
    Commented Aug 12, 2011 at 14:41
  • it's been this way for 3 years now, and all of a sudden it needs to be changed? I don't think so..
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Aug 12, 2011 at 14:43
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    Many things that have been here since the start have been changed... I am sure there will be others in years to come! And anyway, how can you say that?... Didn't you recently change the way questions show up on SO? (with the interesting tab being default)... But, as for this... Weather you like it or not, it has been a (little) problem on SU as evident by the recent Meta/Chat stuff - and I think when other sites become more popular, you will see similar problems... Just not a problem on SO as the sheer amount of questions makes edits hardly show up.
    – William Hilsum
    Commented Aug 12, 2011 at 14:48
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I propose that ♦ moderators could have a "no-bump" editing mode privilege, something that they could tick on and off, depending on the substantiality of the edit.

This doesn't really solve the problem for most users though. Perhaps we could have the same privilege achieved after so many edits, say 2,000 edits performed?

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  • Perhaps not 2000 - most sites don't have enough questions for users to achieve that. Perhaps once they get the Copy editor badge? I mean, on SU we only have 14 users with it superuser.com/badges/57/copy-editor
    – Simon Sheehan
    Commented Aug 12, 2011 at 0:09
  • I have to say... I disagree... For example, you just made a few edits on basic grammar on SU which bumped some questions... IMHO, anyone who edits should get this ability and if anyone is worried of abuse, then, editing should be a higher privilege.
    – William Hilsum
    Commented Aug 12, 2011 at 0:17
  • You need 2K for it though. Shouldn't users know the etiquette of the site by then? @William.
    – Simon Sheehan
    Commented Aug 12, 2011 at 0:18
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    @SimonSheehan you can get 2K rep in 10 days, I've seen users with 2K that know almost nothing about how a SE site works... it varies wildly across the board
    – studiohack
    Commented Aug 12, 2011 at 0:20
  • @studiohack Good point then. I think my idea of the editing one still stands well.
    – Simon Sheehan
    Commented Aug 12, 2011 at 0:21
  • I think 2,000 edits is far too many, however, I take your point about 2k edits - perhaps then the edit privilege needs to be changed to 30 days/50 answers or something that will show "age" on site rather than one person who got lucky on a couple of questions.
    – William Hilsum
    Commented Aug 12, 2011 at 1:36
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    I would absolutely support this idea. In the end, there are two types of edits. One that is purely cosmetic and one that adds information (which makes it interesting for the front page). If a member is trusted enough so that you know they only make cosmetic edits, why shouldn't they be able to act in a "no-bump mode".
    – slhck
    Commented Aug 12, 2011 at 9:37

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