I find it very annoying, when someone reads through my question, apparently understands what my question is about, but just comments on / edits things I've mistaken.

Are they really too busy to answer the question?

Is it that they feel the rep gained from answering the question won't be worth their time?

Or, do they generally genuinely not know the answer?

| |
  • 3
    "Is it that they feel the rep gained from answering the question won't be worth their time?" Personally, yes. It can take a long time to write a decent answer, a lot less time to edit the blatant errors out of the question. – Whymarrh Feb 14 '17 at 2:04
  • 1
    Related: The Community vs. The Domain Expert – Makoto Feb 14 '17 at 2:12
  • 21
    Indeed, these edits are massively improving your questions. Which raises the question of why this one was rolled back. Instead of engaging in a rollback war, I just downvoted your question. Hopefully that answers your non-answer. – Cody Gray Feb 14 '17 at 4:25
  • 27
    In other news, I find it very annoying when someone posts a question, apparently knows the English language and its syntax rules, but doesn't bother to follow them. Are they really too busy to use valid, understandable grammar? Are they really too busy to use a spelling checker that is probably built into their browser? Or do they genuinely not care about the quality and presentation of their question? – Cody Gray Feb 14 '17 at 4:27
  • 1
    The word pedantic is so widely used on the stackexchange that it's, deplorably, become cliche... – user4584267 Feb 14 '17 at 4:43
  • 24
    Ironically, it is the same quality-mindedness of contributors that you like so much when getting answers. Also, it isn't sheer pedantry to expect people to write in a clear, understandable, correct way. The rules of language are critical to communication. Furthermore, we aren't even demanding that you do it yourself; other people are willing to help you out! So the real stubbornness seems to be your unwillingness to let them help you. – Cody Gray Feb 14 '17 at 4:47
  • 1
    and most of all we work as community, your question is only worth something if it has value to the community and we all care to take care of it (edit, vote, answer, comment) in present and in the future. When one stop seeing stuff as I asked and I answered, but instead I tried to create a good question, a good answer for the community you start to understand SO. – Petter Friberg Feb 14 '17 at 8:36
  • 8
    Stop assuming SO is your personal help-desk and you might find it useful to you. Many, many programmers did, no reason to assume you'll be the exception. – Hans Passant Feb 14 '17 at 10:36
  • 2
    I think your question makes the wrong assumptions. – user1228 Feb 14 '17 at 17:54

You shouldn't find it annoying. Even if they don't answer themselves, those editors are helping you to get better answers, by making your question clearer and easier to read.

There is any number of plausible reasons why someone who interacts with a question might not answer it: being too busy to answer, not knowing the answer, being distracted by something entirely unrelated to the question... no one can tell which of these apply in each specific case. Does it really matter, though?

| |

You're assuming that, if you can edit the question, you can also answer it. That's not true; personally, I've edited questions I don't know the answer to plenty of times. Me editing to improve the question (especially if it's badly worded but I happen to understand it) improves the odds that someone who knows the topic well will answer.

There's also a difference between understanding a question and actually knowing the answer. Consider this example: what's the total weight of the earth? It's a perfectly understandable question, but do you know the answer without looking it up?

Incidentally, once you hit 2K rep you no longer gain reputation from editing, so obviously I'm not just editing to get rep.

| |

Comments serve the purpose to either ask clarifying questions so either they or someone else can come along and answer, and all of the edits I've seen on your questions which aren't deleted have been focused entirely on grammar changes ("an" instead of "a" near a vowel; capitalizing the "I" if meant as a noun) or procedural changes to your questions (such as pasting your code from an external service to Stack Overflow).

I'm not sure why you're getting upset about this. Editors that improve the grammar and flow of your question help you get an answer with less chatter about it, because there's less ambiguity. This is to be celebrated. They're not obligated to know the domain of the problem, and it doesn't take domain knowledge to fix spelling or correct punctuation.

| |

You must log in to answer this question.