4

Today I realized that someone had edited another person's answer so that it is now the same as my pre-existing answer.

Jordanka's answer to this question was edited by another user (as you can see, the update was made to reflect the changes to the Dropbox help page).

However, my answer to the same question has always had the same content as Jordanka's answer has since the edit.

Was editing the answer the right thing to do? It seems rather unfair to me as it seems to make my own answer redundant, even though it already existed.

6
  • I think what happened here is not intentional! What I'm guessing here is that he probably have not seen your answer in the first place.
    – Ravexina Mod
    Jul 15, 2020 at 12:24
  • @Ravexina, Both answers contain the identical comment # Should report "not running", which makes it look a lot more like a direct copy rather than an innocent oversight.
    – Ray Butterworth
    Jul 15, 2020 at 12:42
  • 1
    @RayButterworth I think that the set of commands in both answers is copied from the same source. I agree with Ravexina that the editor probably did not notice Lord ST's answer. However, regardless of the intention, which was obviously to make things better, I personally think that edit should probably not have been made, and should probably be rolled back now.
    – Zanna Mod
    Jul 15, 2020 at 13:13
  • @RayButterworth Well, as Zanna pointed out the source contains that comment too. I guess there is no point for the editor to do that. It might be nice to roll-back the edit and refer to LordST's answer as a more recent solution to the problem.
    – Ravexina Mod
    Jul 15, 2020 at 13:40
  • 1
    Why revert the edit, though? These types of edits are common around SE; I wouldn't want to discourage people from doing them. Maybe this is a particular case, but I would still argue that we don't need to roll it back.
    – Dan
    Jul 15, 2020 at 14:46
  • 2
    Maybe it's a special case when an answer is entirely based on external documentation that has changed, but in general I would consider an edit that replaced the whole contents of an answer with something else entirely to be not OK. In this case we ended up with two nearly identical answers, which also seems less than ideal.
    – Zanna Mod
    Jul 16, 2020 at 4:48

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
5

Personally, if I see such an edit in the review queue I would approve it without hesitation.

The answer originally references the official Dropbox documentation. When the documentation changes, updating the content of the answer to reflect that change is extremely valuable. This is how Stack Exchange supposed to work. Keeping answers up-to-date.

It doesn't seem to be a copy of your answer, but a copy of the official documentation. Event the identical comment you mentioned # Should report "not running", is from the documentation.

You must log in to answer this question.

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