11

I have attempted to edit this post, however the edit was rejected.

After asking on the Ask Ubuntu general chat room, one of the kind users said that it is considered a destructive edit to move command line edits to a pastebin, unless it is your own post.

Why is this?

2
  • 8
    The short answer is that you're introducing a dependency on an external source where there was none previously. This is bad. External sources can disappear or change, posts and answers should be self contained.
    – pzkpfw
    Mar 14, 2017 at 13:49
  • 1
    paste.ubuntu.com removes old snippets (~ 3yrs). Here is my question about related issue meta.askubuntu.com/q/14958/26246
    – user.dz
    Mar 26, 2017 at 10:16

2 Answers 2

29

In general, we prefer posts that are as self-contained as possible. If the output was too long to fit in a post, moving to pastebins can be justified, but for that post, it's not very long. Even with a four-space indentation to create a code block, it didn't reach the post-length limit.

We encourage edits which go the other way though (moving stuff that's in pastebins when they could clearly fit in the post).

2
  • 1
    The length limit is 35,000 chars. I'd be surprised if anyone ever reached that. I think at some point before that limit, moving the code is sensible.
    – Tim
    Mar 13, 2017 at 19:38
  • @Tim it appears that it's 30,000
    – Elder Geek
    Mar 20, 2017 at 18:20
2

I see two problems here: 1, dumped data can clutter up a post, making it harder to read quickly, and 2, the community needs to own its own data.

I see a medium-effort solution: Add a collapse / expand button to code blocks. In a no-js environment, do not auto-hide any blocks. If a single line of JS in the head can remove a no-js attribute from the html tag, then auto-collapse blocks according to user preference and block line count.

If user preferences are to be implemented for code block rendering, that would be an excellent opportunity to introduce the greatly missed line wrap feature.

1
  • That may be a good feature request.
    – luk3yx
    Mar 15, 2017 at 3:33

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .