Should there be a limit on the number of edits a single post generates?

Question

I'm not referring to a post being edited between five and ten times by their owner. I'm referring to posts that have been edited over thirty times in the space of one day.

There used to be a time when a question which had been edited ten times by its original author, or generated more than 30 answers automatically became Community Wiki posts. This measure was removed in 2014, and rightly so in my opinion. But now... I'm seeing users who edit their posts thirty, forty and even fifty times.

OK, it's not a widespread phenomenon, and it appears to be limited to two or three users on EL&U but shouldn't there be some limit?

If after thirty edits your question or answer still has not been fixed, or you haven't finished answering, maybe knowing you don't earn reputation points on a CW will encourage greater attention and accuracy.

I don't know, what do you think?

Answer 1

For answers, it's more straightforward - edit it as much as necessary, so long as it gets better each time.

For questions, it's technically the same. However, people who are composing answers would be inconvenienced if the sense of the question changed. I also second Josh61's comment that the OP should not invalidate existing answers. Otherwise, there's no difference between reading a post that's been edited once and a post that's been edited 100 times, so long as it's not edited while you are reading the post.

The preferred solution is probably for them to delete the post, edit it to their liking - multiple times if necessary, then undelete the post. So long as they don't close the page, taking the post offline temporarily in this way should be a trivial exercise.

Answer 2

@Lawrence has already stated what I would have answered, but I'll add this:

Does it hurt the site in any way?

Yes, it puts it at the top again. I think if the user does this, say, to draw more attention to the question (gaming the system, so to speak), it can be something to look into.

If the OP is self-conscious about their English and notices errors, it seems unnecessary to force them to live with unnoticed errors after the tenth (twentieth, thirtieth, fortieth) edit. If the essence of the question is unchanged, it should not matter except in that it kicks it to the top. And I'm not sure that's really a problem.

If it's an answer, as has already been stated, if it improves the answer, it is (imo) not unwelcome. If it makes the answer worse, and the behavior is across multiple answers, then I think a flag to attract the mods should be sufficient, but that's just my opinion.

If it's a new user, it might just reflect enthusiasm for the format.

_{There used to be a user who edited their questions so often (like routinely at least two-three dozen times), I wondered if there was a reason for such behavior. I realized at some point that it was possible that maybe the OP had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Whatever helps them feel better about their post is fine with me. I feel differently when someone edits a post repeatedly to counter a comment or get a different answer, breaking the answers already given. But that is a different matter.}

Answer 3

I'll plead guilty to this as well. I dunno about 50 edits, though.

Why?

Sometimes, I get bored, and even after I answer a question, I spend a lot of time perfecting the answer - there's just something about making it look as encyclopedic / informative / entertaining / perfect as possible that brings me enjoyment. It's like painting or working on a jigsaw puzzle. I'm a writer and editor by profession, so I don't really care if it's a disorder - if it is, it works for me and not against me.

I'm not frothing at the mouth over it, and I don't do it just to bump my posts / answers for attention. That being said, I can't speak for others who may or may not do it for that reason - but then again, there are also users who downvote strategically to put their answer on top instead of upvoting a good previous answer or just leaving it alone, and as I understand it, they get to do that without repercussion.

So unless this really bothers a significant number of users or unless people start seriously abusing it, I would just leave it alone and browse normally.

This particular site gets a LOT of questions / answers, so no matter how many edits there are, there will always be plenty of new / good questions at the top.

Answer 4

I know which question you are referring to. It was edited once again 7 minutes ago and it is the Original Poster's 56th edit in roughly 40 hours after the answer was posted. One edit every 43 minutes for 40 hours seems extremely excessive.

The way I see the problem is this. The question itself is too broad without any research or context and it is not answerable in a simple way. Even a doctoral dissertation on the subject wouldn't be enough to cover the answer fully.

I ask myself, "If I asked this question now, would it survive?" I believe it would never survive.

I think this question should be closed by this community or a moderator who has a single close-vote as too broad and lack of context.

In terms of limiting the number of edits, I don't think it is necessary as long as the edit is made to improve the existing post and the number of edits shows the OP's enthusiasm and efforts to own the post.

The OP doesn't seem to have a bad intention and the answer keeps improving after each edit. The final edit was just to fix a simple typo in a verb. When you look at other answers posted by the OP, it seems that it is just a one-off occurrence.

This question should have been closed a long time ago. The answer itself proves that we should not allow too broad a question here. (I will close-vote it tomorrow as I've run out of votes.)