I recently was editing a post for grammatical and formatting errors, but also noticed that the post seemed to contain lots of useless information that was completely impertinent to the user's question. Omitting this stuff would have been useful, but I wasn't sure about editing it, so I left it.
I am wondering if there is a guide somewhere that will outline the protocols for editing user's posts?
When editing posts I try to do as little as possible to clarify the question.
Grammar spelling - go ahead and fix.
Fix quotes or more often code blocks - go for it.
I will delete inappropriate language, email addresses, or personal information (phone numbers).
I flag spam.
If it goes beyond that, I usually add a comment asking the OP for clarification.
Users generally hate it when you edit their posts too much and if the question if not fixed after requests to do so it will either be closed or down voted or both.
Here's a good example of a question that needed a lot of deleting to make it legible and on-topic.
Soifthereisalotofblabberinggoingonandremovingitservesapurpose: Remove the superfluous info!
seemed to contain lots of useless information that was completely impertinent to the user's question.
Useless information like "my moms name is Clara", "I like rocks", "in case someone wonders my system is Dell", etc. should be deleted from the post. It distracts users and makes questions harder to find. Make sure that the question is razor sharp with all information needed to answer the question without anything "extra".
