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I recently came across a question in which the OP had put a greeting (Hello Stackoverflow land), and ended with another two three lines of thanking. Seeing this as possibly distracting, I edited out these two lines, which I have seen is thought of as a good edit. A few hours later, the OP rolled back the edits and went to my profile. They posted an offensive edit on one of my questions saying: "Don't f*** with anyone's questions a******". Along with that, their edit was suggesting adding the noise that I had removed in their question.

Me, immediately recognizing the edit, was honestly surprised at how they retaliated to an edit on the question. I rejected the edit as This edit defaces the post in order to promote a product or service, or is deliberately destructive.

I came here to ask, is it discouraged to edit questions to just remove noise, or should I just avoid them? Should I continue to remove noise on questions?

Edit: @ThisSuitIsBlackNot commented that the user posted another offensive edit on another users question (I do have an answer on that question) here

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  • 3
    There's also a meta.se question that establishes this as an acceptable edit.
    – josliber
    Commented Jun 13, 2015 at 3:30
  • 24
    Either way, that user is way out of line - should flag it with 'other' for moderator attention.
    – user4756884
    Commented Jun 13, 2015 at 3:42
  • 5
    I think you did the right thing
    – Rohit Gupta
    Commented Jun 13, 2015 at 3:42
  • 4
    In hindsight, perhaps linking the question directly was unwise, since there seems to have been a significant Meta downvote there.
    – Nathan Tuggy
    Commented Jun 13, 2015 at 4:43
  • 20
    Wow what an inappropriate reaction to an edit. Even as a one-off, it really asks for a (short) suspension. And I see that indeed the account is suspended.
    – T.J. Crowder
    Commented Jun 13, 2015 at 17:15
  • 14
    This should never have been brought up on Meta. You should have just done a custom flag. You already know about the discussion on whether these were good edits; there was nothing here to actually ask. As such, this is really just trying to get people to gang up on the other user's behavior. -1
    – jpmc26
    Commented Jun 15, 2015 at 3:07
  • 9
    @jpmc26 I never had any ill intentions. I mainly wanted to know if I should keep fixing it because the (s)he was getting pretty upset because of my edits. I did know that greetings shouldn't be written but if I should remove all noise if the person will react in such a way. If you are referring to the meta effect that struck. I didn't realize it until Nathan Tuggy commented about it and edited out. Ken White rolled it back and it seemed like he knew what he was doing so I left it. Again, I didn't have any ill intentions with this post.
    – Downgoat
    Commented Jun 15, 2015 at 3:16
  • 4
    @jpmc26 Meta exists exactly to discuss this type of matters. He has done the right thing by posting here.
    – nico
    Commented Jun 15, 2015 at 16:46
  • 1
    Well, at least their crappy retaliation edit was rejected by the other reviewer. And here I was about to lose all faith in the review queues.
    – ThisSuitIsBlackNot
    Commented Jun 15, 2015 at 16:46
  • 6
    Never mind, they proposed the same crappy edit, complete with foul-mouthed edit comment, on another user's post. One reviewer approved it. ಠ_ಠ
    – ThisSuitIsBlackNot
    Commented Jun 16, 2015 at 0:02
  • @vihan1086 The one ThisSuitIsBlackNot pointed to was actually before the edit on your post. Doesn't look like they've done it since.
    – Kendra
    Commented Jun 16, 2015 at 12:57

2 Answers 2

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is it discouraged to edit questions to just remove noise, or should I just avoid them?

As long as all that needs to be fixed with the post is removing noise, then you should remove it. If there are other things that need to be fixed like spelling/grammar errors, you should also fix those too along with removing the noise. In this case, I didn't notice any spelling/grammar errors. However, you didn't remove all the noise like you should have.

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Why leave "Thanks for you help in advance" in the post? We show thanks here by upvoting answers that helped and accepting ones that really solved our issue. No need ever for "thanks in advance" to remain in the post.

Why leave "Can anyone help me out?" in the post? By the OP posting the question we already can assume that he/she is looking for help. We can safely assume that if someone wants to help him/her out, that they will leave an answer or comment to the question. There is no need for this line, so it can be safely removed as well as it's just noise.

Should I continue to remove noise on questions?

Yes please! Just remember to remove all the noise, and fix any other things that need fixing as well.

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    "As long as all that needs to be fixed with the post is removing noise, then you should remove it." This oft-parroted maxim is counter-productive. 2k+ users with edit privileges (such as the OP here) should go ahead with any edit that improves the post, even if it only fixes part of the post e.g. noise removal. There is no downside. (For <2k users, sure, we don't want them jamming the review queue with trivial edits, but that's not the case for this asker.) That said, I do agree that the best thing to do is to remove all noise, not just some noise.
    – Jean-François Corbett
    Commented Jun 14, 2015 at 20:32
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    I think the "Can anyone help me out?" line could or even should stay, because it is the sentence that does make the post a question. Admittedly, it's not a good one, "How to make this work?" would've been better (despite being just as unspecific).
    – Bergi
    Commented Jun 15, 2015 at 3:29
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    @Bergi A good alternative would be to change the first sentence to "How do I remove ...".
    – Bernhard Barker
    Commented Jun 15, 2015 at 17:47
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    @Jean-FrançoisCorbett Even for <2k users I'm not convinced there's a problem. It's not like the suggested edit queue is always jampacked. If it were in a similar state to the close votes queue, then we might have an issue.
    – Chris Hayes
    Commented Jun 15, 2015 at 23:45
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    @Jean-FrançoisCorbett lets put it this way: 2kers should edit everything they feel confident they can edit without leaving the post in worse state as it was.
    – Braiam
    Commented Jun 16, 2015 at 0:55
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    @Chris Hayes: Yeah, the problem with suggested edits is not the workload but the quality of edits by less privileged users being vetted.
    – BoltClock
    Commented Jun 16, 2015 at 6:44
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Your edit was appropriate, and that poster's response was not. :-)

I've once again made the edit you attempted, and left a note for the poster explaining why I did so, as well as some links to the SO help center and main Meta site that hopefully will provide them with some guidance. If not, at least we tried. :-)

When you receive that sort of response, just flag it for the moderators as offensive. That sort of behavior isn't acceptable here, and if it's repeated often enough a moderator can issue a warning or suspend (or ban) the user if it's appropriate.

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    @KatjaChristiansen: Yes, it did. I rolled it back as well, and flagged it for the moderators. Thanks. :-)
    – Ken White
    Commented Jun 13, 2015 at 5:30
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    And we handled it (sorry for the delays, it's a weekend)
    – Martijn Pieters
    Commented Jun 13, 2015 at 9:35
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    @MartijnPieters suspension aside, hasn't the community been a bit harsh on the OP? Is that really a -16 question, wiping out a substantial part of the reputation they've gained from asking and accepting? Looks like a couple of sympathy upvotes, perhaps, but is that really a -16 question?
    – Bill Woodger
    Commented Jun 14, 2015 at 16:56
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    @BillWoodger Thundering herd strikes again.
    – user207421
    Commented Jun 14, 2015 at 22:52
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    @BillWoodger: such can be the Meta effect. The user did draw attention to their little corner rather... colourfully. Short of deleting this whole post I don't know we can do much about that. Note that the OP had gained all but 2 points from the post before this all went down, so they are back to 1 point (even without a suspension).
    – Martijn Pieters
    Commented Jun 14, 2015 at 23:17
  • @BillWoodger Votes individually give a signal to the system that a post is good or bad. In this case, the system received a strong signal so OPs rep is gone and it's obvious what peoples' opinions are on the question now. Nothing OP did makes me sympathetic, so I think this is ok.
    – bjb568
    Commented Jun 15, 2015 at 23:40
  • @bjb568 my question was, is that a -16 question. A rhetorical question. No-one likes the kid, or what they do, so the bullies are doing OK.
    – Bill Woodger
    Commented Jun 16, 2015 at 0:06
  • My point is that the score is irrelevant. Vote on the post, not the score. And voting certainly isn't bullying.
    – bjb568
    Commented Jun 16, 2015 at 0:53
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    @bjb568 people were voting on the user, that's my point. The question does not merit -16 (or whatever it is at now). Your response was "Nothing OP did makes me sympathetic, so I think this is ok". Votes don't bully people, people bully people. With votes. Of course, the way the person acted prior to that makes it "OK". Exactly as no bully will think that they themselves are wrong, there will always be an excuse. Sorry to have to draw it out in this way, I'm not suggesting this is you. Clearly this user has been bullied for their offence(s). Suspension, no problem, but bullying? Meta for you.
    – Bill Woodger
    Commented Jun 16, 2015 at 8:34
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    @bjb568 why'd you bother to edit? Trying to turn around -31? For such a community-deemed disaster of a post (even at -16) I don't think any amount of editing can save it.
    – Bill Woodger
    Commented Jun 16, 2015 at 8:38

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