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This question really applies only to beta StackExchange sites, particularly at a relatively early stage when receiving on the order of 5 or fewer questions per day.

My understanding is that constructive editing, be it to improve formatting, fix grammar, remove taglines, or change the question's title to be a proper question, is generally accepted and encouraged (hence all the badges). However, on younger or less active SE sites, various concerted attempts at editing questions and answers may lead to a front page with nothing but a long list of questions attributed to a single user, which may give newcomers/outsiders the mistaken impression that this user is the only active user on the site.

How should one (ideally) act in this situation, particularly if your goal is to increase participation and generally improve the site?

Note: This question may be more appropriate on the individual metas of the sites in question, but, by the very nature of this question, I am unlikely to get an answer on those metas, which have even less activity than the main site.

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2 Answers 2

up vote 10 down vote accepted

This is why Joel pushed to start CHAOS, to get people involved in making the site more appealing in the first place. If they think that other people are asking really good questions, they are more likely to bring their good questions along too.

I advise go ahead and edit them as-is. If you feel really strongly about it, just make two or three edits every 12 hours or so, giving time for the new Qs and As to show up, thus displacing your edits.

Or get on chat and recruit a couple other people and share the "burden".

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I'd agree with @jcolebrand - you really do want your first questions to look good, and your first answers to be top quality.

Definitely push for your core users to all take their share, so you can start your site looking as you would hope it to be.

Even when sites are out of beta, making edits on the worst questions/answers is still to be recommended - not all at once, as it does fill your front page, but you can stagger them.

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