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I'm new on this forum and I'm learning new things everyday (which is great!), and I am also learning about how to behave on this forum so here's a question about etiquette and all that, specifically about the etiquette regarding the editing of other people's responses.

For example ... I posted a reply not too long ago and signed off with "I hope this helps".

A couple of hours later, someone came along and edited my reply (without me being able to agree one way or another) which is obviously something that can be very good. So I wondered what dramatic improvements that person made, surely with the aim to ensure that the OP would understand and/or contextualise my reply better after the improvement. You can imagine my disappointment when I saw that the only change was to "correct" my sign-off to "I hope this will help" .. no further changes, no correction in my suggested code or approach.

I get it, my English is far from impeccable .. but seriously .. Am I right to be a little peeved off? .. my sign off is my sign off and I don't why anyone should come and correct it .. what if I sign off with Bert .. would it be ok for someone to come along and say "oh look a mistake, it should be Bertrand" .. what if I want to sign off with "toddleedoo" (or whatever .. ) .. how much is to ask people to keep their wee fingers away from that? (but please do correct my reply if it is wrong or troublesome in some other way, I will thank you for it).

Can I get some opinions on this? I'm curious as to why someone would get out of their way for such an inconsequential change - do people get points when they edit other people's replies? Is it possible to reject editions?

Many thanks & toddleedoo

Bertrand

ps: apologies for the negativity ... I hope I'm not the first one to get a little upset about this.

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  • Check out edit questions and answers in the help section of this site.
    – Scott Hodgin - Retired
    Apr 25, 2018 at 14:14
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    Also see this question on the main meta. While it may seem like killing politeness for the sake of it, I agree with the main points in the top-voted answer.
    – Aaron Bertrand Staff
    Apr 25, 2018 at 14:26
  • Right .. so that discussion was started a long time ago and by the looks of it, we're still at it!
    – Bertrand Leroy
    Apr 25, 2018 at 14:32
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    Of course, people new to the site ask the same questions that many people before them have asked, and even old-timers disagree with community consensus here and there, but we keep the meta discussions around precisely so we can point to them when the same question comes up again, it can help understand how most people feel and why.
    – Aaron Bertrand Staff
    Apr 25, 2018 at 15:44

1 Answer 1

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I'm curious as to why someone would get out of their way for such an inconsequential change...

This was a pretty terrible edit. Feel free to roll it back.

...do people get points when they edit other people's replies?

People who have not yet earned the Edit Questions and Answers privilege earn +2 rep when their suggested edit is approved. People with that privilege can edit without review, and do not earn rep.

Is it possible to reject editions?

Yes. Go to the revision history and select the rollback link.

On a separate note, sign-offs and signatures are generally not used. Your user card provides that information. See below.

More information:

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  • At the risk of having this deleted ;P Thanks very much for this clear and concise reply (and not polluted by Hi and bye !)
    – Bertrand Leroy
    Apr 25, 2018 at 14:42
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    @BertrandLeroy Ha ha thank you. Not going to delete it (meta is for discussion so comments are rarely deleted here).
    – Paul White Mod
    Apr 25, 2018 at 14:44

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