11

I've noticed an answer that contains a section that doesn't offer anything to the question other than to preemptively poison the well and be rude to any users that attempt to downvote or edit:

Here are the answers to your questions. If you find this information useful, copy and save it, because 'trusted members' have a habit of downvoting and deleting my answers which conflict with their political convictions. They like to edit out warnings like this too.

I've edited bits of mudslinging out of similar answers and attempted to here as well. I've tried to repeatedly remove this bit of the answer because it serves no purpose, provides no useful information, and in my opinion is needlessly rude. So far as I'm concerned, the rest of the answer isn't great, but is at least an answer. I feel very strongly that anybody else who peer-reviews this edit would agree.

Problem is, nobody ever gets to peer review it because the answer's owner always gets to it first. The end result is a "fun" little addition to the question which, again, adds nothing:

EDIT: As of now there have been seven attempts to edit out the warning.

What are my options for forcing another member of the site to peer-review a potential edit? If my edit is incorrect, I'd like to know, but I have a very strong suspicion that preemptive insults to the moderation staff don't belong in an answer.

  • 3
    The answer in question now appears to have been deleted. – F1Krazy Feb 17 at 10:25
  • It's been undeleted now by a moderator – sau226 Feb 18 at 11:23
  • @sau226 I was about to comment that, actually. The offending passage has also been removed by said moderator, though I imagine it will be edited back in the moment the user next logs in. – F1Krazy Feb 18 at 13:20
11

The problem, in general

This is called Edit war (What to do about a dispute within edits?), which quite often occurs in the form of Rollback war

What you can do

What are my options for forcing another member […]

You cannot "force" someone because we are equal here (except the Mods who are granted with extra privileges to be able to resolve conflicts);
in fact, your three options are Convince, Raise to a Mod, or Leave it alone.

Convince

  • Leave a comment to make sure the opposite side understands your reason. Believe it or not, many conflicts end at this point;
  • On the other hand, the failure to do so puts you on the same position as your opponent (it takes two to tango; sad but true).
  • Convincing someone requires some effort, for example you have to find a reputable post on Politics.Meta or Meta.SE to support your point;

Leave Alone

  • In case of Rollback war, the post gets auto-flagged for a Mod's attention after a certain number of consecutive rollbacks; this is not the case for re-edits, I believe;

Raise

  • If the dispute continues, flag it yourself;
  • Moderator has a privilege of locking posts to disable subsequent edits;
  • Although the OP is always granted the privilege of the decision about whether the edits match their opinion, (Does the OP have the right to undo edits?) they should not abuse this right and are required to stick with general SE policies and common sense.

In this case

  • The "intro" seems clearly non-constructive, it adds nothing factually related to answering the question;
  • Moreover, consecutive edits like "this post has been edited five, now six, look seven!!! times" does not make the post any better, but instead tempts other users to downvote it just after reading the "intro";
  • Mind the topic of the original question. It must be sensitive to many, so it may require some extra tolerance from all users involved.
10

If you think that there is something wrong with Politics Stack Exchange and its community, then the correct place to discuss this is here on meta. Answers and questions are not the place for meta-discussion, like how much you hate the community and how unfair they are to people like you. Questions and answers are supposed to contain only useful content.

If you notice someone adding insults directed towards the community, then remove it, and post a comment where you explain politely that they should be posting this on https://meta.politics.stackexchange.com. If they roll back the edit, flag it for moderator attention. Moderators can lock questions and answers. This is a last resort measure, though, because locked answers can not be commented or voted upon. It should generally only be used for content which is worth preserving. When the answer is objectively bad and the author rejects any attempts to improve it, then it is usually best to just delete it.

3

If you still think the answer is bad you can downvote it (if you have enough rep). If you also think the answer has severe formatting or content problems making it unlikely to be salvageable through editing, and might need to be removed then also flag it for low-quality.

Rather ironically, this seems to be known to the user since the warning you tried to remove contains the following:

my answers get downvoted and deleted

  • The thing is, I think it could be salvaged through editing and I tried to do that. I'm just not able to have anybody else agree or disagree with the edit without being interrupted by the answer's owner, who has a very obvious documented bias against anybody offering edits. I feel like there's a breakdown of the balance of powers here. – GGMG-he-him Feb 17 at 2:59
  • @GGMG you can also leave one comment to make clear your concerns to other users. Given how long the (somewhat rambling) answer is others may not get down to read it but the user cannot remove it as easily. – JJ for Transparency and Monica Feb 17 at 3:00
  • @GGMG as for removing the ranty warning myself, I'm a bit hesitant as we're not supposed to edit against the authors' wishes and because of that they can easily revert (approved) edits. Given that editing may be impossible, the answer may be unsalvageable. – JJ for Transparency and Monica Feb 17 at 3:03
  • 2
    How about you stop deleting answers that you don't like content of, that in no way violate site's policies? – user4012 Feb 17 at 20:32
  • 3
    @user4012 I'm sorry, is that a question? – JJ for Transparency and Monica Feb 17 at 20:52
  • @JJJ - a suggestion. – user4012 Feb 17 at 20:53
  • 3
    @user4012 I see, the question mark may have confused me. Please note that this answer suggest flagging for low-quality if one deems it unlikely to be salvagable through editing (which is the case if edits keep getting reverted). As such, I suggested (and did) flag(ging) for low-quality. I must admit that in hindsight it's better to flag for mod attention so they can fix a post without the offending content. – JJ for Transparency and Monica Feb 17 at 20:56
  • 1
    @JJJ - the answer in question was not in any way low quality (it may be wrong, wholly or partially, but that does not make it low quality), and pretending that a meta paragraph in front of it makes it magically low quality is intellectually dishonest. While I support flagging (and the edit as a first resort), this user's answer have recently been targeted on purely ideological grounds both with downvotes and far worse, with deletion. – user4012 Feb 17 at 20:59
  • 4
    @user4012 I fully support a mod using their discretionary powers to undelete it, remove the offending paragraph and locking the post so the edit cannot be reverted. As for ideological grounds, that has no part in my delete vote. I downvoted because I think it's a bad answer with regards to content, supported by questionable sources sometimes even YouTube links without explaining what to expect. – JJ for Transparency and Monica Feb 17 at 21:32
  • 1
    @JJJ - do you vote to delete all answers supported by "questionable" content, or even worse, unsupported? I can list you several – user4012 Feb 17 at 21:44
  • 2
    @user4012 no but I tend to downvote them if I can. As you can see on my profile I've already downvoted 600 posts on this site. – JJ for Transparency and Monica Feb 17 at 22:09
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – user4012 Feb 17 at 22:27
  • 4
    I don't have issue with downvoting (i still think you are totally wrong in how you vote, but that's your prerogative). The problem is with deletion, and with attacking answers as "low quality" – user4012 Feb 17 at 22:28
-3

Whether you like it or not, the content created by individual users is licensed to SE under CC 3.0.

The last sentence of section 4(c) of the Creative Commons license reads

You may not implicitly or explicitly assert or imply any connection with, sponsorship or endorsement by the Original Author, Licensor and/or Attribution Parties, as appropriate, of You or Your use of the Work, without the separate, express prior written permission of the Original Author, Licensor and/or Attribution Parties

The added emphasis is mine. If the original author does not agree with your changes to their content, please, be mindful that they are still listed as the author of the content. If you want to force their name to be signed under your version of that content (even if it is an improved version), you would be implying their endorsement of your work (the edit).

While it may be tempting to argue that there is revision history and that the original author has the privilege of erasing their answers, do understand that when they created the content, they did license it to you under the assumption that you will not be, colloquially speaking, putting words in their mouth.

Whether or not you did that with your edit is entirely the author's judgement. Any modification, however minor or beneficial, can be rejected by the author under these license terms.

If you think the answer, as it stands, could be improved, you can downvote and suggest edits. If you think it is unsalvagable, you can suggest deletion. But you should not be breaking the promise which the Stack Exchange Inc. has made to the author when it licensed the content from them under the CC license.

The content is licensed, by the content creators, to the SE Inc. free of charge. Realistically, (1) attribution, and (2) the covenant to not misrepresent authors' intents are the only 2 forms of compensation that the authors get in exchange for providing this free content. If you are looking to undermine one of them, please realize that, however well-intentioned you maybe, you would be taking away a large part of what the content authors get, as a compensation, for their efforts.

  • 3
    I'm not sure how removing content from an answer constitutes "putting words in someone's mouth". It's more like taking them away. I can understand your concern, though. – F1Krazy Feb 18 at 13:17
  • 2
    @F1Krazy Perhaps not as common, but removing content can fundamentally alter what is being said. It won't always be this exaggerated, but here's an example: i.imgur.com/05bxD5F.png – BurnsBA Feb 18 at 15:21
  • @F1Krazy just as removing words from a sentence can change the sentence, I guess. But it doesn't really matter what you or I think. It's the author's prerogative to be the final judge on whether there is fidelity between the OP and a proposed edit. If the original author thinks that the removed content is integral to their produced content, then it is. You can post the entire answer (with the offending part removed), as your own though. As long as you mention that your answer is based on a previous answer by the author, that would be attribution. Then you can vote to delete the OP. – grovkin Feb 18 at 18:53
  • Can you support this legal argument with precedent? SE has set up a different system than you describe, possibly informed by their well-paid lawyers. – Obie 2.0 Feb 23 at 0:29
-11

I am the author of the answer in question.

I sometimes place that warning in my answers which I think will be unfairly downvoted and deleted, which happened to another of my answers, discussed here:

Answer which was deleted, despite being relevant, informative, compliant with SE's code of conduct, and selected as best answer by the user that asked the question.

Since the deletion of that particular answer, I sometimes include a warning in answers which I think might be unfairly deleted as well, so people who may consider the information interesting can at least retain it.

I considered GGMG's edit, but I rejected it because it seemed to be about him taking offense, not about correcting typos, requesting clarification, or anything else like that.

GGMG attempted to edit my answer about 6 times in 20 minutes, which is harassment. I even edited out the 'trusted users' part which he took particular offense at, but he still kept on with it.

I kept count to tell anyone reading that my warning did in fact have merit, and such editing does happen.

I've made my wish to include that warning clear, but he is not willing to respect that, even after I edited out the 'trusted users' part. He doesn't have the right to force me to edit my answer which is within SE's code of conduct.

  • 5
    That's a meta-commentary that doesn't add any value to the post, and should be removed as noise. Someone disagreeing with others is just that, a disagreement, and it's pointless to show that on the post. – Andrew T. Feb 17 at 7:48
  • 8
    -1, this does not seem to answer the question. The OP's question was not about how you justify "warnings" in your posts. It was about how to deal with this situation. Also, speaking for myself, such "warning" seems to be annoying noise which only tempts for a quick downvote (in strict accordance with the SE code of conduct, must I say). – bytebuster for Long Usernames Feb 17 at 7:54
  • @bytebuster Do you think I should repost the answer without the warning? – TheLeopard Feb 17 at 7:55
  • 6
    @TheLeopard, frankly, I don't know. To me, the answer has other flaws, too. Why don't you ask a Meta-question like "How can I improve this post so it were better accepted by the community?" Much better than a recommendation of a single /me. – bytebuster for Long Usernames Feb 17 at 8:03
  • @bytebuster I'm not sure that a meta-question would be treated in an unbiased way. I asked your opinion because I read some of your other posts earlier in the week and they were quite level. – TheLeopard Feb 17 at 8:19
  • 11
    @TheLeopard You should not be including passages in your answer that are not an answer, and that goes double if they are inflammatory, rabble-rousing, self-fulfilling prophecies. Of course if you preface each of your answers with "This text doesn't belong in my answer and someone will try to edit it out," then, justifiably, it will probably get edited out. You're trying to make yourself a martyr of censorship, but you're inviting edits upon yourself by including passages that don't belong in the first place. – John Feb 17 at 9:01
  • 11
    @TheLeopard Your sources are problematic as well. Youtube channels are a poor source. Dinesh D'Souza is a far-right conspiracy theorist. Mediabiasfactcheck evaluates gulagbound as a Conspiracy-Pseudoscience source with low factual reporting. They rate the American Thinker, Questionable based on extreme right wing bias, promotion of conspiracy theories/pseudoscience, use of poor sources and failed fact checks. Canadianliberty has no established track record as a source. – John Feb 17 at 9:13

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