Since when is it possible for other (administrator?) users to edit my questions on StackOverflow? I just got alerted that someone removed a sentence from a post I made there. It's not terrible. I probably should have excluded that sentence myself. But that seems really heavy-handed.

Yup. anyone with more the 1.5k points can edit a question.

Yeah, I was surprised (and annoyed) when someone edited one of my *answers*. As if it's okay to put their words in with my handle at the top of it. SO can be great, but the community has far too many self-impressed dicks. As we all know.

Dude, StackOverflow isn't your blog.

It is more like Wikipedia. The questions serve as a lemma to bind possible solutions to. If editing them makes them better-suited to the QA format (and yes, sometimes even if not), people at SO will totally edit the hell out of them.

And you should be happy about it as it makes the platform more usable for everyone - you included.

If it's nit-picking, then indeed it can be annoying. But if someone actually improves your questions or answers, it benefits everybody, including you.

@Oktokolo My impression with most SO complaints is that the people themselves are the dicks, not the SO crew. That's because they don't bother to find out what SO even is before polluting the platform. A forum, a helpdesk, a blog, a community, whatever shit.

@Fast-Nop Well, the actual SO crew is basically invisible. It is the whole point of the StackExchange network to gamify the hell out of the QA format to make it better without even needing an actual crew doing any community management (except on meta perhaps).

The ones posting "your question is shit!!111" - just normal users. The ones just editing your questions - also normal users with more points. The ones banning the first ones - yep, still just normal users with even more points... It's just normal users with more and more points all the way down.

And the rules are pretty darn simple - it is a QA platform. Could also see that as a help desk with an archive and nice tagging. sometimes you need to discuss a little to get the best solution - that is what the comments are for. But it isn't a forum, so the flat comment board structure discourages actual deep discussion trees from growing. It definitely isn't a blog though...

There's a reason why you go to SO for technical solutions and not reddit. This is a part of it.

@kamen This was solidly nitpicking. The removal was inconsequential.

@Oktokolo On Wikipedia your name isn't displayed next to the content. SO's UI communicates that people own their text, but the site's rules contradict this.

@Fast-Nop I have one major real complaint with SO, the assumption that just because a question doesn't have a single objectively correct answer (or rather such an answer isn't immediately apparent, since even the most subjective questions can be approached with objective reasoning and reduced to their subjective elements) it doesn't belong on a Q&A forum.

@Oktokolo

"Dude, StackOverflow isn't your blog."

I didn't say it was.

The fundamental basis of Stack Overflow is that a community of users, and the OP, can assess the quality of answers far better than any one individual can.

There's just no need to disrespect people in the ways that are all too common on SO. Let the quality of the answer be judged by the very large number of people reading it and then adding, or not adding, their upvotes. As things stand, perfectly fine contributions can be hacked at, or even removed entirely, by individuals who are nowhere near as smart as they think they are.

@lbfalvy SO is not a discussion forum, but subjective things typically get discussed. That's what e.g. Reddit is for.

The one concern I have is that tech changes over time so that the best answer from yesterday isn't the best one today anymore. In theory, people could edit their answers from years before, and sometimes, that does happen - but it's rather rare because the gamification doesn't really account for that.

That's a major design problem with the whole underlying idea of SO.

@Fast-Nop Outdated answers tend to be overtaken by non-outdated answers eventually even if no one ever downvotes or edits old stuff.

But the downvote option is still there and if you find outdated answers, you should downvote them in addition to upvoting a correct answer to speed up the process.