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On several occasions, my posts have been edited, but the editor did not leave any comment(s) on the edits. This is not helpful, as I am left with the question of the rationale behind the edit and/or how to avoid making the same mistake when writing future questions.

In particular, the edit on this question left me confused.

Is there a way to comment or ask a question about a particular edit when the editor leaves no comment(s)?

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    \$\begingroup\$ Do you have an example of a post of yours edited by another user? FYI, editors do not need to leave "comments". At most, they need to leave a descriptive "edit message", which you can read by visiting the post revisions. You can always "ping" users who edited a post of yours by using the @ character and their username. \$\endgroup\$
    – yivi
    Commented Nov 11, 2019 at 17:31
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    \$\begingroup\$ Protip: avoid "[Rev. 2]" and "***EDIT***" markers in your posts. If someone wants to see the revision history, they can always click the edit timestamp (all timestamps are permalinks on Stack Exchange) - you (we) want posts to look as seamless as possible, as if they always looked the way they look in the latest revision. Also avoid needlessly bolding entire sentences. \$\endgroup\$
    – Mathieu Guindon Mod
    Commented Nov 11, 2019 at 22:35
  • \$\begingroup\$ As you can see in the side-by-side markdown view of the revision history, Jamal's edits did not make any changes to your code. Contrary to your comment's accusation, he didn't alter the parentheses on any of your function declarations. If present, those errors were there in your original code. (You can, however, see that Lukasz's suggested edit was wrong in how it destroyed your numSides variable declaration, but you already fixed that.) \$\endgroup\$
    – Cody Gray
    Commented Nov 11, 2019 at 22:54
  • \$\begingroup\$ @CodyGray I understand all of Jamal's edits except the ones involving the inline code in the bullet list. He removed some parentheses from the function names. \$\endgroup\$
    – Mode77
    Commented Nov 11, 2019 at 23:03
  • \$\begingroup\$ I'm assuming you're interested in the latest edit by Jamal in particular. If you have questions about the rest (incl.Lukasz' suggested edit) as well, please clarify and I'll amend my answer. \$\endgroup\$
    – Mast Mod
    Commented Nov 12, 2019 at 3:50

2 Answers 2

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If you want to communicate with someone who has edited a post,1 you can always @[username] ping them in comments below the post, even if they haven't left a comment. You may think it's not possible, because their username is not in the list of auto-completion usernames after typing @ in the comment, but they can be pinged if you manually type their name.

For more detailed information, please see: How do comment @replies work?


1. That's if they actually had their edit applied to the post. They are not pingable if the edit suggestion was rejected, or if an edit suggestion has not yet been approved.

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Is there a way? Yes, on meta or in chat. There is no option for pinging editors like there is for users leaving a comment. Or ping them, thank you Makyen. Considering the editor here is a moderator, you can be about guaranteed he reads every meta. Just post it on the correct meta ;-)

For this particular edit, I've fixed it. Looks like an honest mistake to me. Jamal edits so many questions that this was bound to happen sometime. Not even he is perfect.

Leaving comments for every edit is not feasible and wouldn't have fixed the problem here. The "problem" here is comparable to a typo and commenting typos assumes we catch them during the edit. In which case we'd fix the typo, not comment on it.

Descriptions for edits are primarily useful for major edits, for people new to editing and everyone without instant-edit privileges. For minor corrections and readability upgrades while having privileges, it simply goes a lot faster if you don't worry too much about the description most people won't care about anyway.

In short, editors sometimes make typos, too. If you see an edit that is generally positive, but missed the mark by a bit, feel free to correct it. You won’t be stepping on anyone’s toes.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ When I migrated this to your Meta, I was hoping that Jamal might see it himself and provide a personalized answer, if he saw fit. I took a gander at the questions list to see what his chances were. Turns out pretty high, considering the last question before this one was asked almost 2 weeks ago. Stark contrast to my home turf. I won’t even try to promise I’ll read every question that gets asked on Stack Overflow’s Meta… The crazy thing is, I do a decent job of keeping up. \$\endgroup\$
    – Cody Gray
    Commented Nov 12, 2019 at 20:52

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