A moderator edited my question. I don't like the way it looks now

Question

The question in question is this. I specifically relate to the edit #2. I guess the intentions of the moderator were to improve the post, but I am unhappy about the way it looks now. The headlines are kitschy, and the title is flat.

There is some soul that I put into writing. I see a post as a synergetic entity; one cannot just edit one part of it and disregard the way it plays against the rest. This edit thus harms me. It is especially unfortunate that the editor did not leave a note so I may not even address them to reconcile this predicament.

Was it indeed necessary for the moderator to apply the edit? Is it not objectionable by a mere user? To what extent is a question I pose mine, and to what extent it belongs to a highly reputable passer-by?

Overall, I must say I am frightened by the zeal of the moderation comparing to Stack Overflow. I am not willing to post questions only for them to be trimmed to an informal standard. I am a person.

Answer 1

Let's check the edit diff and see what it's about:

title diff

+ Type safe, easy to understand matrix multiplication
- Here is a type safe, easy to understand matrix multiplication. Is it correct? Is it actually as type safe as I think?

The questions in the title are too much text to be displayed correctly on the front page. They also do not make your question title more indicative of what the question is about.

These are questions that should generally be formulated in the question body, because they are specific concerns.

body diff

+ ### Data.Nat
- *`Data.Nat`*
...
+ ### Data.Vector
- *`Data.Vector`*
...
+ ### Data.Matrix
- *`Data.Matrix`*

These changes are accessibility changes. As of the original post body, these pseudoheadings were bold monospaced text. With the edit, they are level 3 headings. That has some advantages. For one, headings are often converted to fragment addresses (on SE that is not the case yet). Furthermore they are handled differently by screen readers.

Lastly they are semantically more correct and additionally they are automatically bold.

Assuming you really liked the monospaced look, you can improve upon the original edit, by explicitly marking the heading text as monospaced like this:

### `Data.Nat`

Now to your questions:

I see a post as a synergetic entity; one cannot just edit one part of it and disregard the way it plays against the rest.

True, but this edit is hardly worth mentioning, IMO. It significantly improves the question presentation on the front page and slightly improves the presentation on the question page, without even touching most of the post.

This edit thus harms me.

If that is what you truly feel, then you should roll the edit back. As you correctly note in the question comments here on meta, rollback wars are not something you want to get into, though.

I consider the changes to be minimal and very noninvasive.

Was it indeed necessary for the moderator to apply the edit?

I'm pretty sure that the moderator only acted in their capacity as a user here. As such the question should be "was it necessary for a user to apply the edit".

I'd say: Yes. It significantly improves the question title and on the way also fixes some minor problems in the post body.

Is it not objectionable by a mere user?

Why would it not be? I mean it's a pretty clear-cut good edit, insofar as that it accomplishes the goals defined in the editing guidelines.

To what extent is a question I pose mine, and to what extent it belongs to a highly reputable passer-by?

hmm ... to some and to some. The question itself is yours, but SE explicitly encourages other users to improve your question. Whether that entails spelling, formulation updates or other improvements to the question structure.

I am not willing to post questions only for them to be trimmed to an informal standard. I am a person.

There is a pretty formal standard. I'll link to it again, just in case: Editing Privilege Explanations.

Yes. You're a person. You're not your post. An edit to your post is not an edit to your person.

Answer 2

Is it correct? Is it actually as type safe as I think?

"Is it correct" should never be used in a title here. Titles here should state what the code does. If someone feels that it is not correct, then we'll tell you. That question is implied everywhere, so it needs to be stated nowhere. This is also a sensitive subject since we don't review non-working/buggy code. So if it's not correct, we shouldn't review it.

If you want a specific question answered (type safety), you're on the wrong site. What we would do is a general review, possibly paying extra attention to type safety. Or possibly not.

I think that a lot of the confusion is that you're coming from Stack Overflow. They are entirely different. On Code Review:

1. A question cannot be marked as a duplicate unless the code is identical. On Stack Overflow, it's the question that needs to be essentially the same. Even quite different code can be marked as a duplicate.

2. We encourage more context. Stack Overflow wants a MCVE. We close MCVE questions.

3. On-topic answers here are reviews of the code. The requirement is that there should be at least one insight about the code in the answer. We don't allow askers to limit that. Stack Overflow is all about the question; the code is only to support the question or answer.

These differences lead to us having relatively specific standards about titles. A title should describe what the code does briefly and to the point. Occasionally we allow funny titles, but we never allow titles about correctness or specifying a type of review.

If that edit had been proposed by a regular user, I would have accepted the change to the title. That's in line with site standards. If you think that particular piece of advice should appear somewhere specifically, that would make a good meta post (Please add title requirements to ...). You may want to search to see if someone else has made the same suggestion previously. There may of course be an actual reason for not doing it.

I disagree with the change to the headings, as they are now not semantic HTML (there's no second level heading; it jumps straight to third level). But there is a standard of putting file names in bold, not italics. I'm not familiar enough with Haskell to say how that applies to your code. But if it were Java, each class would be in its own file and the filename would be listed in bold. If those are not separate files, then it's not clear to me why they are in separate code blocks.