Are the submission rules/guidelines for this forum posted anywhere?

Question

A question of mine in this forum was edited by a moderator. A couple of the edits seem a bit non-standard. So I would like to know if there is some reference I can consult before posting, so I know how to be in compliance.

The question is here.

There were two types of edits made. The first edit was a formatting one, and I have no issues with that. I see that I used incorrect formatting, and the moderator corrected that. The second edit consisted of:

• Deleting a line of text, "I'm new to Wordpress."
• Deleting a line of text, "Thanks in advance."

I'm not sure exactly how those aren't in compliance, and I'd just like to know for the future. What rules did I break/not follow, and where are those rules posted?

Not sure if I should post this here, or in the meta forum, or somewhere else. If I'm in the wrong place, apologies, and please direct me.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Welcome! The correct place is here, meta site for our stack. :)

All the rules and guidelines are at the help center.

About those lines edited out here is the specific guideline:

Do not use signature, taglines, or greetings.

Every post you make is already “signed” with your standard user card, which links directly back to your user page. If you use an additional signature or tagline, it will be removed to reduce noise in the questions and answers.

Your user page belongs to you — fill it with information about your interests, links to stuff you’ve worked on, or whatever else you like!

What kind of behavior is expected of users?

Traditionally this also includes "social" fillers like hello/goodbye/thanks remarks. In a nutshell the cultural norm of Stack Exchange network is less conversational and more to the point, which is somewhat different from typical online forums.

More talkative action happens in The Loop (our stack's chat room).

Answer 2

Just to bump in here, I see I am the one who did the edits. It is as @Rarst said, all the stuff I edited out of your question is considered noise and does not bring any added value to the actual post or problem.

It is a fact that adding a lot of noise to a question might cause the reader (which could be potential answerer) to loose interest in the actual question which could lead to the reader to move on to the next question in queue. We are all here in our spare time, and most users log in to quickly skim through questions and check what they can quickly answer. As I said, too much noise could lead that that specific user looses interest and moves on.

Just a tip, adding I'm new to WordPress is actually bad and scares many potential answerers away. From past experiences with such type of questions, I personally now skip these questions as they are telling me that the post would require a lot of additional work which I sometimes do not have time for or just not in the mood for. Whatever my reasons, I skip and ignore these questions. At most, I sometimes just edit that part out and move on

Good questions should be to the point and only include all relevant info to support the actual problem and not a history from where the question is coming from. When it come to things like thank you, you can always add a thank you by voting up an answer which you like and/or accepting an answer which actually solved your issue

Answer 3

@Pieter OK thanks. I now see the reasons for the edits. Format editing seems benign enough, but editing another's content is behavior I've never seen in any forum before, so it will take some adjustment on my part. Personally, it feels like it could be lead to abuse or overstepping of boundaries. There is indeed some transparency--everyone can see who made which edits--which is nice. But it would be nice if those edits also indicated the reason, so posters and readers alike won't be in the dark. Those reasons would also save time/man-hours, as many paragraphs have now been written explaining two small edits.

Answer 4

@Tim

I wanted to leave a comment, but it did not allow enough characters, which is why I went with an answer. I had to do the same thing here. Any way around that in the future (aside from splitting my post over multiple comments)?

you can see the edits, the content of them and the reason the editor entered for them by clicking on the edited link.

Right, I understand that and have already viewed the edits. My point was that in this case, the editor did not provide reasons. I am not trying to bash this particular editor. But to give some creative feedback for the future, editing user content, in my opinion, is already pushing the envelope. Doing so without at least providing a reason will leave many (most?) users at least wondering why. I understand moderators are very busy, and volunteer their time. But I think up-front reasons/justifications would pay for themselves in terms of discussion time. As you can see with the two small edits in my case, man-hours are still being incurred explaining why--many of which could have been avoided had a reason been provided at the time of edit.

This is just my humble feedback. I appreciate the discussion.