39
Yes, this is totally worthwhile! Please do this. The value of a linked reference is far higher than the value of an unlinked reference; the latter I fear often simply go unconsulted.
I go further than your suggestion in the question, and say that it is totally fine and encouraged to add the link, even when it wasn't so difficult to find.
35
Just to give some background on this project: it's indeed something I'm doing on my own, independent of Stack Exchange. There are more independent 'volunteer' projects around the Stack Exchange network, e.g. Smoke Detector (which I'm also a member of) which automatically flags spam across the network (including MathOverflow), and a dozen bots performing ...
33
New Answer:
Upon reflection, Emilio is 100% correct: We need to sound the alarm bells. Here's a link again to Emilio's well-thought-out answer on the main meta site explaining this, which is probably the best place to start our campaign. In short:
As currently envisaged, the only way to preview MathJax before publishing a post will be by toggling out of ...
30
If it's been down for a few weeks it's too early (as you say) but a good idea to mention it now.
Your query points to about 600 answers, this is a lot, so the hope, if it's once judged time to make a change, to do it in an automatized way (which can be done only by moderators, I guess). Maybe some preparatory work should be done prior to detect what is the ...
20
I see your point and it makes sense. However, it is a fundamental aspect of community moderation that edits should be anything but discreet. It also makes sense for editors to be clearly visible as that information is very useful for moderation tasks.
That said, I agree that it is not necessary for the editor to be the same size as the original author as it ...
answered Nov 1 '14 at 2:38
18
As Gerald Edgar said, the most common reason for this situation is that the answer reveals to the OP that they posed the question in a form that did not properly capture what they intended to ask. I think that it is often OK to edit the question in this context, provided that the edited question explains the history in a clear and prominent way, with due ...
17
Most of the time, the edits that I see on MO are respectfully and tactfully performed and small in scope, and gratefully received by the post's author as improvements. Occasionally though I see flare-ups over an edit, to the point where a post will be self-mutilated or self-deleted; (more rarely) there will be an edit war. I hope this answer can help to ...
17
I guess I usually act as follows:
a) If I know how to fix the link (typically, link points to an identifiable paper), I either edit accordingly, or add the link as a comment (I might even provide 2 links, e.g., link to journal, often behind paywall, ideally using DOI, along with arXiv link); also I might add the journal reference when it wasn't initially.
b)...
15
In the Internet world (and also in the real world) non native English speakers have huge disadvantage. Gaining some attention to one's MO questions and answers due to the need to edit them more is a little compensation.
15
You can hide the part in HTML comments:
BEFORE <!-- this is something I want to hide --> AFTER
produces:
BEFORE AFTER
Spoilers would be another option, but perhaps less clear in conveying the intention.
>! This is something I want to hide
produces
14
Maybe the solution is to change the title to something like "Derogatory Quote About Graph Theory" and restore the original word scum to the body (but not the title) of the question. Quid is certainly right that the question as it currently stands makes it look like the OP didn't bother to Google, and I think it's wrong to create that impression.
I am among ...
14
I probably should write a few lines about this, since the question was obviously a reaction to my edits. (But it will be certainly nice if some more experienced users share their view.)
I consider improving some posts on MO as a useful form of procrastination. So I hope I will procrastinate less in the future and, as a consequence, my edits will annoy less ...
14
As a longtime Wikipedia contributor who has been around a lot of truly crazy edit wars, my advice is: never revert more than once even if the other person's edit is terrible. Instead leave a comment explaining your objection, and flag the post or open a discussion on meta. There is an official 3-revert limit on Wikipedia but in practice it's preferable to ...
14
Personally, I find it less usable than the status quo, but better than the new editor proposed by SE. So if it is inevitable that we will have to settle for an inferior alternative in future, this is a less-inferior one.
Elaborating on what makes it less usable:
the cursor jumps to unpredictable positions when one moves up and down, and sometimes becomes ...
13
Sure, the editor and preview components are open source. It's released under the MIT license which is one of the most permissive copyleft licenses in existence.
You'd need to make your own customized bits, but it wouldn't be entirely difficult to have it work entirely from local storage. If you come up with anything neat, feel free to share it :)
13
I believe that I am the user that you are referring to. I apologise to anyone I have inconvenienced.
The majority of the edits that I have done over this short period of time were fixing very similar errors which caused the output to split over several lines. I think I got carried away because I wanted to fix all of them (there aren't that many to fix). ...
13
There is a good reason for linking to a paywalled link. It is usually the official journal link. It is likely to contain the accurate citation information, it is likely to stay on the web for longer (as opposed to self-hosted paper by the authors), and it is ultimately the official version.
Of course, if the link is just to a library link, then this is not ...
13
Since other answers mention HTML comments, let me clarify that using them is only a commonly employed custom on SE sites, which just abuses the fact that it works by accident.
In reality, the Stackexchange Markdown parser does not support HTML comments. What actually happens is that the initial < followed by unrecognized content is parsed as an invalid ...
12
The OP wrote: I know on the old meta, now known as tea, such issues were discussed. I am collecting here some relevant threads which I was able to locate. I am making this CW - feel free to add more links, if you consider them relevant.
Editing old answers by other users; François G. Dorais said there: "It's fine and encouraged to improve old questions and ...
12
Here is one option put forward by the SE developers: switching from MathJax to prosemirror-math. For a quick look at how it works, I'll just pull this from their readme:
Examples
Unlike other editors, this plugin treats math as part of the text itself, rather than as an "atom" that can only be edited through a dialog box. For example, inline math ...
10
I am not familiar with software management of MO, so I do not know whether the following suggestion is applicable or no?But I guess that it is easy to be applied.
Suggestion 1: Consideration of two types of edit bottons: minor and major.
For minor edit, the edited post would not appear at the first page.(front page)
This enable the asker to revise his/...
10
Thanks to jeq's suggestion, there is an answer on stackapps for that exact purpose! That doesn't mean it shouldn't be a standard feature, but it does mean that you can have this feature right now.
The script is called Stack Activity. I've just tested it on Chrome and it works wonderfully:
answered Nov 28 '14 at 3:20
10
Today, I have spotted Pietro Majer bumping close to 20 (and counting...) of his answers to the front page with minor edits. (Sorry to be so blunt in naming a respected user, but I guess I'm a little annoyed.)
10
I think so. The detail is all there, even if spread into the comments; it's what they are for. If further expansion is needed, why not just ask the person who wrote the answer to expand it? But, as you say, if this is only for the sake of third parties, can they also just read the comments? Or, ask in the comments for clarification themselves?
[Added, as ...
9
It's happening again, more than 15 minor edits by one user. Clearly it is just not well known how much this affects the "Active" view. The view by newest Questions is unaffected. I have no suggestion, aside from revisiting "Silent” Edits for MO?"
9
On my opinion, links with restricted access are legitimate and desirable when there is no free link to a particular book/paper.
After all, this is a site for professional mathematicians, and majority of professional mathematicians have access to some math library which subscribes electronic books and journals. Moreover, in many countries university ...
8
You always have the option of entering a new edited comment and deleting the old one, which has almost the same effect as what you're hoping to do. (That's what I used to do back when it was not possible to edit comments at all.)
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