koobas.hobune.stream
Discussion is over. No need to resurrect at this point.
[META] Why is moderation allowed before editing others' posts?
In the FAQ, it states that moderation is allowed at 1000 karma, and editing others' posts is allowed at 2000 karma.
When in the moderation queue, as a 1000-2000 karma user, it is driving me nuts that my only options are to reject with comment or approve.
For example, if a user asks a good question that should be published, but they don't properly format their code into a code block so the question is difficult to read, what I'd like to do is reformat it and publish it. Currently, all I can do is approve it as is, maybe drop a comment about formatting, and hope another mod or the OP fixes it.
So, I guess my question is: Is there a reason why there's this gap in the karma requirement?
If there is a good reason, then does the Unity Answers framework allow an exception to edit posts while they are still in the mod queue?
Apparently, UA is going to get some much-needed love in a while, as it's really, really broken around the edges.
But, yeah, I remember that it was really, really annoying to not be able to fix people's code. The way we post code is really, really poorly implemented (code after lists doesn't work, copy-pasting other people's code gives wrong inlining, #pragma strict shows up as bold, etc), but we should at least be able to fix that mess up at 1k karma.
From the moderator guidelines:
Badly formatted question: code provided by user is unformatted or it’s unclear what the user is asking. Reject immediately.
By rejecting questions with properly informatted code you are forcing new users to learn how to format their code. If you accept those same questions then those same users might not learn how to format their code before reaching enough karma to avoid the moderation queue. $$anonymous$$ake sure to leave a comment on the rejected answer (like you should on all rejections) to let the user know how to format their code.
@maccabbe hit the nail on the head, while it's really up to the mod if they have the points to edit/correct/publish, it should be commented to the user that they should properly format their code and rejected.
On the right hand side of a new post all the information is there to make a good post. The users that post horrible questions and content don't care, they want answers... that will leave this place looking like a mess and not helpful.
I guess the question is, is it better for the user base to hand hold them, or is it better to have an expectation of completeness or some sort, well thoughtout questions with information? or just the average, "$$anonymous$$y code won't complete" in the subject line?
It's also possible that 1000 to publish seemed alright, but 2000 to edit may be harder to obtain and perhaps leads to less nasty edits that could deface the site.
Yeah, I see what you're saying. I guess it's always an ongoing battle between being inviting to new users and maintaining order. I do always comment when rejecting, but I know some users claim they can't see the editing buttons (I've heard they don't work in Firefox), and it's not entirely intuitive to tab them over manually, so rejecting and telling them to format their code could reasonably cause them to just quit out of frustration.
Obviously, there are definitely cases where it ought to be rejected outright, but for otherwise good questions, it would be nice to be able to (a) format the code for them, (b) leave a comment explaining to do that in the future, and (c) publish the question so they can start getting help.
I just feel weird because I'm rejecting like 30%+ of new users' questions because of formatting, and another 50% because of vagueness (which I'm totally on board for). It should be a simple thing (on both ends), but folks just don't pay enough attention.
Finally, I don't know about you all, but since I was brought up in an English speaking environment, I likely wouldn't do more than glance at the sidebar on the right until after I had typed my question, if at all. It might be a small change, but if that was moved to the left of the page or above the question, it might draw the eye more and have a bit more impact.
I would think they used to match but a while ago, some complained they were not able to moderate while they wanted to. So Unity lower the karma level to moderate so that more could participate.
Then, it ended up that some thinking karma is an important thing, were rushing into accepting useless questions like GetComponent related, that are answered 100's of times just so that they could answer and get karma.
So the latest trend should have been that the moderating level should have been set back up to a 5000.
I guess this is why you have that gap.
