Repeated TeXifying of question titles

Question

A specific user has recently edited a lot of years-old posts in which, as far as I can tell, he is just TeXifying titles. While I assume that this is being done with good intentions, it seems likely that he does not realise that he is bumping these, in many cases long-dormant, posts to the front page, and that this is generally counter to community norms. Am I correct about this? Is there anything that can or should be done to communicate the situation to him?

Answer 1

The user has been contacted by a moderator. Please advise if the behavior persists.

Answer 2

Maybe it could be useful to spell out explicitly why the edits in question were problematic. (Both for the benefit of the user referenced in the question and also for other users who want to help editing.) I do not claim that this represents the majority opinion - after all the opinions on this vary and it's probably impossible to write down something with which everybody would agree. I will add the disclaimer that my participation on MathOverflow is rather minor and mostly consists of helping with edits and some stuff here on meta - where my experience from other sites in Stack Exchange network is sometimes useful. So if some more seniors users write something here, you should definitely listen to them. Still, I hope that at least to some extent the advice given below and the links collected there might be useful.

How can I know whether my edits were well-received

In this case, the user in question only found out that the edits were in some way problematic after he was directed to this meta thread and also by receiving a moderator message.

How can a user find out that there are problems with some of the edits before receiving such notification?

Look at the reviews. You can see all your suggested edits on the corresponding tab in your profile. There you can see whether they were rejected and even if they were approved whether somebody voted to reject. The fact that the edit was rejected or that the edits were approved but not unanimously suggests that some users did not like those edits. When voting to reject, the user reviewing the edit can either choose one of the predefined reason or type they own custom message - reading the reason they chose can give you the idea why the reviewer disagreed with the edit. I will list here two recent examples, here is suggested edit review with custom message and here is another one where one of predefined reasons was chosen. (I have included them merely as examples to make clear where the results of suggested review can be find and what you can read there. I do not link them to attract attention to specific users. Still, I chose examples that are related to TeXifying titles, since this was what prompted this discussion.)

After you gain full edit privileges, your edits are no longer reviewed. But probably at that stage it is expected that you're experienced enough to judge whether the edit is useful enough and whether it is worth bumping the question for this change.

If you are not sure whether your edits are ok you can also ask in chat, specifically the room named MO editor's lounge seems to be a reasonable place. (Admittedly, the room is currently not visited by many users, so it is possible that you end up without any response. But there were a few discussions related to this in that room. You can find some of them among bookmarked conversations.) I will also add a link to the post announcing creation of this room.

What kind of edits should I do and in which way?

While the intention to improve the site by editing posts is certainly nice, it is good to be aware of adverse effects. The main problem is that any edit bumps the question to the front page. If old posts are moved there, that pushes the most recent post from the front page and they receive less attention.

Do not edit many old posts a once. For these reasons, it is better not to bump too many old posts at the same time. Recommendation given here in meta is to restrict yourself to editing at most 3 edits of old posts per day. But probably it is better to go a bit lower that this in the case of less experienced users just to be on the safe side.

You can also check whether some old posts has been recently bumped by other users by searching for posts and limiting the date range. So, for example, if you see that several old posts have been bumped during last hour or two, maybe you can leave your edit for later - so that you do not bump even more old posts.

Of course, the situation is different for posts that are new and posts the were recently bumped for other reasons. (If several edits cause bumping of a question, it is definitely better if they are made at approximately the same time than to see the question bumped several times, each time month or two apart.)

If possible, improve more things. If you want to edit a post, try to look whether you can make also other improvements to the question and the answers. The reasoning is the same as above - in this way several edits/improvements will bump the question only once.

An it's quite natural that there is a difference between a minor edit which makes only cosmetic changes and the edit which, for example, corrects completely broken MathJax or replaces dead link to an image included in the post. Edits like this are definitely more important than correcting spelling/grammar or something similar.

Where can I find more about this issue?

There were several discussions about this here on meta (and before that on tea). Having a look at those discussion could help you get the feeling what users of this site think about various types of edits:

• What's our consensus on people resurrecting old questions just to edit formatting?
• Editing titles to include $\mathfrak{LaTeX \; Math}$
• Do we have an unofficial quota on how many old questions one should bump for minor edits in a single day?
• Is it worth editing old posts to add links for references?

Of course, there is much more about this on meta. I have included a few threads which seemed rather relevant.