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As a regular user I ask this question politely; but please tell me why so many SE regulars are in such a hurry to edit other people's questions?

Excuse my cynisism, but is this just a self-serving opportunity to earn points or badges?

Whilst this practice may be helpful from time to time to help clarify a confused question, I must say in very strong terms, that more usually it might be better described as pedantic meddling.

If people really want to contribute to the Drupal Answers community, why don't they help by adding comments or answering people's questions, instead of changing them for no good reason?

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Drupal Answers is (intended to be) a collaboratively edited repository of reference-quality material.

Even small things like improving grammar, formatting, adding tags, etc, can help to make that happen, so we whole-heartedly welcome edits that try to accomplish those things.

I do understand that it may seem pedantic, but that's not the motivation. The badges/reputation are to encourage editing because we want people to make questions and answers shine as much as possible.

Of course, with any type of gamification comes an element that are just in it for the "prizes", so to speak. But they're in the vast, vast minority; people with lower rep can't even get edits approved without a higher rep user reviewing it, so there are safeguards in place.

Try not to take it personally, I assure you it's not intended that way. It's always about quality, quality, quality.

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  • Thank you for the input Clive Aug 31, 2017 at 16:09
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    No problem, I remember feeling similarly indignant when I was a new user on Stack Overflow, and pretty much everything I posted was picked at and altered to some seemingly arbitrary standard. After a while I realised that it was just one of the founding principles and I learnt to embrace it, and true to form, every time I need to find something, there it is on Stack Overflow or Drupal Answers, almost always having been edited, and almost always telling me exactly what I need to know very quickly. It can be annoying to individuals, I totally get that, but the end result is good for everyone
    – Clive Mod
    Aug 31, 2017 at 16:19

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