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A recent question of mine has been closed and reopened a lot of times.

As the FAQs suggest, I've edited it a lot of times, to improve it as much as possible.

This however has raised the community-wiki flag and I've found that community-wiki discourages new answers, by design.

That, in this case, looks a bit a deadlock in the learning process.

I've read that, in this case, I have to flag the question for moderation, so that a moderator can remove the community wiki flag (and I did it).

However, this corner-case made me think to a feature request that could mitigate the problem in the future. One of:

  1. exclude editing done in closed questions from the count that automatically raises the community wiki flag
  2. create a new flag that disconnect the question's author from reputation but disable automatic application of such community-wiki flag to new answers.

That question has been finally deleted. No problem, with that.
Still, I think that this feature request has a value. Please, take it in consideration.

share|improve this question
If you think the question should not be a CW you should do a custom flag (to mods) explaining why you think it shouldn't be a CW. I don't think it would be that useful to prevent it by default or to create a new flag for it. –  Hugo Dozois Apr 8 '13 at 15:08
Answers aren't effected by a questions community wiki status. –  ɥʇǝS Apr 8 '13 at 15:10
Btw, what is the point of feature request number 2? –  Bart Apr 8 '13 at 15:20
HugoDozois I did. @Seth and Bart: I did understand that new answers to a community-wiki are new community-wiki by default. If not, I can delete this feature request at all. Do you confirm? –  Giacomo Tesio Apr 8 '13 at 15:24
I'm not sure I understood what you said, but if a question becomes community wiki that's only for the question itself. New answers don't become community wiki if the question is. –  ɥʇǝS Apr 8 '13 at 16:58
@Seth I read here that "An answer posted to a Community Wiki question will also be Community Wiki. Note that when a question is made CW after answers have already been posted, the existing answers are not normally converted to CW automatically.". Is that answer wrong? –  Giacomo Tesio Apr 8 '13 at 17:02
Hmm. I'm not sure that is correct, but it might be. At this point I'm not sure anymore. –  ɥʇǝS Apr 8 '13 at 17:03
@seth I believe it is correct that such answers are also community wiki. –  Andrew Barber Apr 8 '13 at 17:38
Thanks @AndrewBarber At least the feature request makes sense... :-) –  Giacomo Tesio Apr 8 '13 at 17:40

1 Answer 1

As far as why I've declined the flag:

  1. Even if the question stays open, it's the very definition of a 'wiki' -- adding answers and editing existing answers.

  2. Stack Overflow rewards knowing what you want to ask, and not putting meta commentary into the question. I'm not going to go against that because you were bit by it, especially since it's not just you that we'd have to worry about, it's every single user that went down this path and decided they didn't like the outcome.

On the topic of the feature request, it should not happen, for the following reasons:

  1. Questions get closed when there is a section of the community that believes the question is not a good fit for the site. This happens even to popular questions if they aren't the types of questions that are appropriate for this site.

  2. Questions that are closed are generally in a transitional state: Either being reopened again or being deleted.

Put those together, and you can see why questions that become CW because they were edited while closed should not be stripped of CW.

Why would we want to encourage people to ask popular, off topic questions? That's precisely what removing CW does, and I hope we learned our lesson from that a long time ago.

I've gone into detail on the question's merits here.

share|improve this answer
"Stack Overflow rewards knowing what you want to ask" as far as anyone reply. BTW, this is not a question on the flag, this is on a feature request that is designed to cope with those "user that went down this path" (a constructive question that did not recieve answer wikified) in an automatic way. –  Giacomo Tesio Apr 8 '13 at 15:17
@GiacomoTesio: We define "constructive" as questions that can be definitively answered. How can your question (as currently structured) be answered without creating a "list of things?" –  Robert Harvey Apr 8 '13 at 15:27
Yes. For example the author of a book on this topic would be autoritative enough to simply answer "Yes, I wrote a book on this topic." No list. –  Giacomo Tesio Apr 8 '13 at 15:29
@GiacomoTesio If a question has been edited enough to turn it into CW, but those edits were truly appropriate (and not a huge number of minor edits just trying to bump the post) then you can flag the post and have a mod un-CW it. The auto-CW is in there to prevent abuse, and it shouldn't be removed even for closed questions, as that potential for abuse still exist, and there is still a mechanism to address legitimate cases. –  Servy Apr 8 '13 at 15:29
BTW, I really appreciate any help to make it better. I've also asked here how to. –  Giacomo Tesio Apr 8 '13 at 15:29
@GiacomoTesio "here's a book on the topic" isn't an acceptable answer on SO. Answers must answer the question not tell you where you can find the answer. –  Servy Apr 8 '13 at 15:30
@Servy no, the answer would be the "Yes" part. –  Giacomo Tesio Apr 8 '13 at 15:30
@GiacomoTesio I can see no possible refactor of this question that would make it acceptable. What you want to end up with is a list of things. Any question that results in a list of things is considered inappropriate on SO. The problem with your question is so fundamental that no edits can make it appropriate. –  Servy Apr 8 '13 at 15:31
I understand what you mean. But you are not talking about that specific question: no one, anywhere I posted that question, has answered (except for @RexKerr but I'm starting to think that he's a lone hero... :-D) –  Giacomo Tesio Apr 8 '13 at 15:35
@GiacomoTesio You think that "yes" is going to be a helpful answer. All an answer needs is the word "yes" and you're satisfied? If such a low quality answer would answer the question, then the question itself is of excessively low quality. –  Servy Apr 8 '13 at 15:35
@Servy "Yes, I wrote a book on the topic" from an autoritative source would be enough. If it's autoritative enough his name would help me to find the anti-patterns on google, and his answer would have been accepted. If he is not autoritative it would loose enough reputation at answering simply "Yes" (or "No"), thus he would not do so. The question is posed in a way that only constructive answer can be given, without loosing reputation. –  Giacomo Tesio Apr 8 '13 at 15:39
@GiacomoTesio If this is just a feature request, as you say -- and not meant to house discussion about the question's merits -- then why are you engaging in that discussion here? –  George Stocker Apr 8 '13 at 15:41
@GeorgeStocker sorry. I was trying to anwser others' questions. Feel free to remove all the comments and redirect to the other one for the merit, meta.stackexchange.com/questions/175507/… –  Giacomo Tesio Apr 8 '13 at 15:44
@GiacomoTesio Then we're back to the previous point. The answer isn't answering the question, it's simply directing you to some other place that actually answers the question, and that actual answer is a list of things, so what you really want for a proper answer is a list of things. If "yes" would be a proper answer then I could answer the question saying "yes" knowing that there was a well documented list of things somewhere, even if I didn't write it and knowing my name in no way helps you find it. –  Servy Apr 8 '13 at 15:46

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