Attempted subversion of a question

Question

There has been a recent attempt at subverting a highly active question question What is the pacifist position on Ukraine? (+36 and nearly 9000 views at the moment of writing.) Specifically: they renamed the question into Pacifist position in support of genocide of Ukraine and added material in the text of the question in the same strain (i.e., arguing for qualifying Russian actions in Ukraine as genocide, while the question was about positions by specific western groups.)

This constitutes a violation of the SE policy on edits, as the meaning of the question was clearly changed. What was a legitimate question became an explicit attempt at channeling the extreme views on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, stating positions that go far beyond the positions stated by western governments (the acts of genocide have been committed in Ukraine, on a massive scale, and possibly state-sanctioned - this is under international investigation, and constitutes an important part of the conflict, but does not fully summarize it.) Moreover, such heated rhetoric is routinely exploited by the Russian propaganda, serving as the basis of the claims about denazification, russophobia, etc.

That such an action could be taken against a highly active question creates a potential for using Politics SE as a propaganda tool, e.g., by extremist right-wing groups or even security services of some states (in fact, we are possibly already dealing with such an event.) This could be extremely damaging for the community and its reputation.

I therefore suggest that the moderators do not limit their actions to restoring question to its original state, but also:

• Clearly restate the community policy on editing questions - how much editing is allowed, the obligation to collaborate with the question author, the caution when editing highly active questions.
• Take exemplary measures against the offending user - e.g., by revoking their editing privilege or expelling them from the community.

Answer 1

The question we are talking about here indeed had a slight "Ukraine should give up" slant by assuming as fact that it would not be possible for Ukraine to return control of its territory (during the past months it looks as if they make slow but solid progress in doing exactly that). I myself considered to make edits to the question to fix that. But the whole purpose of the question is to find politicians who share this sentiment, which is difficult to do without acknowledging that it exists. So I refrained from doing so.

However, the edits made by wrod went much too far and turned the question into an outright anti-Russia propaganda question.

No, this is not a clean war. Yes, the Russians committed warcrimes (and so did a couple Ukrainians, by the way). But that's what sadly happens in pretty much every war. Entering polemic exaggerations into the question, like "Russia's war of genocidal aggression" or "Russian Federation's attempt to kill as many Ukrainians as possible", is uncalled for.

Answer 2

I'm not going to discuss the edit in this answer (though I do disagree with the edit, if anyone cares), but I'd like to address the comment that wrod should have his editing privileges revoked or be banned. First of all, editing privileges cannot be revoked without a suspension, which prevents the user from doing anything on the site, which is the second thing you are suggesting. Let's assume (though I'm not saying this is true) that the edit is as bad as you say. That doesn't deserve a suspension, as the editor didn't know the rules (assuming you were correct about the rules). If the user continues doing such things to the point it can no longer be considered them honestly knowing the rules and actual malice, only then would it be worthy of a suspension (again, this is assuming the edit was as bad as you say).

Answer 3

Well, this meta question is engaging in an interesting strategy. It's not novel. But it's interesting.

This meta question is attempting to argue that the main site should allow extremist content because not allowing it would galvanize extremists. The kindest way to describe such an argument is "interesting." But I am not sure we have to force ourselves to be quite so detached. The argument can actually be classified as "sinister."

The user appears to challenge moderators to join them in their effort by saying that their expectation for a moderator are such that they

expect them restating it here or posting here a reference to a post where this policy is clearly outlined

Of course, there is no such policy on edits. There is only a recommendation to have a good-faith effort to not make edits be out of step with OP intents. As this meta answer, by a former moderator, states there is no way to suggest edits once a reputation is too high. But the original author has the ability to revert the question to a previous state. So this particular issue with this main-site question didn't even have to involve moderators.

Of course, there are other problems with this main-site question's setting. Namely, it's a cleverly worded push question which both makes a legitimate inquiry and pushes a genocide-enabling position at the same time.

But the site's users appear to have elevated (with their votes) the inquiry component of the question over the pernicious effect of the push premise. It's a balance, of course.

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I see that there is, in fact, some interest in this question. So, as promised, I will elaborate.

First of all, I am the user who made the edit. And as per this meta answer, no one else should be calling out a user by name. Naming yourself is acceptable however.

Second of all, also as per the directions in the same meta answer, the OP meta question is out of line.

Your goal in asking a Meta question should be to find out what the correct behavior is, not to correct the behavior yourself. If your question happens to achieve correcting the behavior, great, but that shouldn't be the focus. We are not here to shame users until they feel they have no option but to leave completely.

The author has also made some hostile comments in my directions, which (probably due to a heavy moderation load and other obligations) have not been addressed by the moderators.

I hope this does not mark a period of a beginning of unrestricted exchange of hostilities on the site. Time will tell. Some of the other hostile comments have been removed. And I am thankful for that.

Finally, (and this is in response to the actual inquiry in this meta question), my behavior was not only OK. It was the expected form of behavior under the circumstances.

1. I identified a question which I believed merited closing.
2. I voted to close.
3. I left a comment explaining my reason for voting to close the question.
4. I edited the question to correct the offending parts while preserving the actual inquiry in the original question. I did it in a way which did not invalidate any of the (numerous) existing answers.
5. I left a comment mentioning that I did make the changes in order to make the question more palatable.

The fact is that, on this site, once the rep is high enough, there is no way to propose extensive changes without making them. That's just a part of how the site is setup.

If the author disagrees with the changes, they can revert them back or request that someone with a high-enough level of reputation changes them back.

The author did not attempt to revert the changes.

Rollback is a fairly straight forward task and it's certainly available to a user with as much experience on the site as the question's author.

While rollbacks do sometimes lead to a rollback tag of war, this was not what happened here. No attempt was made by author to undo the unwanted edit.

Instead, the author engaged in a hyperbolic and hostile rhetoric on the meta site. This should not have been their initial reaction.

After a moderator did undo the edit (on the author's request), the answer did attract further close votes, indicating that I was not alone in my thinking that the question needed some fixing.