Forum:Editing Comments of Others

{| width="100%" align=center|- The following is a documented discussion over editing other's comments. The general consensus is as follows: 
 * style="margin: 1px; background-color: lightblue; border: 1px solid #009E60; " valign=top |


 * 1) Should we allow editors to correct the spelling in the following conditions: 


 * 1) *User talk page: No 
 * 2) *Page Talk page: Yes 
 * 3) *Documentations: No 
 * 4) Also, should we be allowed to undo spelling corrections even if its not our own within the allowed editing rights or just our own? Just our own..

Please do not edit or add any further comments to this particular section as it is documented.

Okay an argument with DS, MD and myself. Basically, MD edits and corrects the spellings of others and DS argues that no one should edit others' comments. My view; so long as its not meant to be insulting, or is altered to say something entirely different from its original meaning it should be okay to correct spelling mistakes. When I was at wikipedia it was perfectly fine to do this as it made life a lot easier for everyone.

So opinions, what are everyone's overall views? I agree that a user talk page is under almost full control of the said user. So long as your not altering comments or just deleting when things don't go your way, or running a campaign against something theres no queries with how you set up your user page. Its our other pages that are in question here. On the one hand, their open for the entire wikia community to edit freely, but WHERE does that freedom end? One-Winged Hawk 14:42, November 23, 2009 (UTC)


 * I completely agree with Angel Emfrbl's on this matter. As long the editing is strictly spelling correction and not alteration to the point that it reflects someone's else opinion or it's insulting to the user it should be okay to be edited. After all, the reason most comments are often kept in archives and aren't deleted from the page itself is because they are left to be seen by people because they carry information about resolved issues, problems in need of attention and argumentations on something controversial. Not all users that come to this wiki speak English nor it's their primary language. Some people could very well get confused if in a word a letter is missing or it's in the wrong order. Especially people who are using site translators. Drunk Samurai is partially right about editing other people's comments because it could lead to a series of problems like the above mentioned and I can understand his concern about the issue BUT arguing just for the sake of arguing is childish and won't lead to anywhere. That's my opinion and my thoughts on this, I'd like to hear the opinions of others too. MasterDeva 15:27, November 23, 2009 (UTC)


 * *Actually can't stop laughing since I made 3 spellings mistakes that needed to be corrected apparently!*


 * Lol. X-D One-Winged Hawk 16:46, November 23, 2009 (UTC)


 * XD MasterDeva 16:51, November 23, 2009 (UTC)


 * Honestly Drunk Samurai is clearly too integrist on this point. After all he is undoing some part that does not belong to himself. Technically he is contradicting himself. If you want your spelling mistake corrected you can't do it in the current status. As for me, since I'm not fluent in English, I'm always glad when someone corrects me. Kdom 20:00, November 23, 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the support Kdom. I'm glad to know that I can help and be of assistance. By the way, your vote would be appreciated here it's about the Eneru/Enel issue. MasterDeva 20:29, November 23, 2009 (UTC)


 * Kdom has a point (psst, you didn't sign your comment with ~ Kdom) and actually I'm jealous since I didn't think of that point (darn it!). One-Winged Hawk 20:32, November 23, 2009 (UTC)


 * Damn, I thought about it, but I always forgot in the end, I should right it first :-( Kdom 20:45, November 23, 2009 (UTC)


 * Don't sweat it, better late than never as they say! ;-) MasterDeva 20:56, November 23, 2009 (UTC)

The comments only belong to the person who created them. They do not belong to anybody else and only the person who created them has any right to edit them. Drunk Samurai 22:15, November 23, 2009 (UTC)


 * Repeating the same thing over and over again like a parrot and acting like a problem child doesn't make your point any stronger! MasterDeva 22:37, November 23, 2009 (UTC)


 * Hate to say it but a point has been raised, undoing the edit of another is likewise yourself commented the same act, whether you like it or not. If you truly believe that the edits belong to only that person, then it means you cannot undo the edits made to anyone else's comments but your own. And under what rule do we place it under? Its hardly vandalism. We have no rule to cover editing of comments, and until now its been largely an unwritten rule that only the deleting and altering of others comments was a bad thing. Hence the discussion here was opened.


 * In your court, you say we can't alter anyone's edits, but not the full "why". On our court we say its okay so long as its not an attempt to mock and humilate the person, and the other things I've said I'm not going to repeat. At the moment, there is a greater reason not to be concerned unless the serious stuff kicks off.


 * Still, lets get word around and make this more formal shall we. Theres only the opinions of 4 people here thats hardly enough of the wikia. One-Winged Hawk 22:46, November 23, 2009 (UTC)

Editing other's comments simply for spelling errors is indeed okay to a point as long as the overall content is not change. However there are some exceptions I think.


 * 1) If someones notices the spelling error and points it out in discussion and the original author decides not to edit his comment, correcting the spelling error might make any further discussion strange.
 * 2) If the spelling error is documented along with other comments as a record of a particular discussion then correcting it maybe a violation of the documentation.
 * 3) If the spelling error was intended as a insult or compliment, correcting it might change its original effect.

That's all I can think of know. Mugiwara Franky 05:05, November 24, 2009 (UTC)


 * Exactly Mugiwara Franky, you nailed it straight to the point. So far I tried to be careful not to correct any mistakes in phrases that seemed intentional, jokes or ones that are referred to further later because it would make the whole discussion strange. If I'm in doubt I'll leave it as it is, there are sometimes though I can't even understand what they're trying to say! 0_0' LOL!! MasterDeva 09:25, November 24, 2009 (UTC)


 * Would the removal or correction of redlinks be considered a spelling edit as well? I ask this because for me, it would be the main reason to edit the coomments of another user. El Chupacabra 14:04, November 24, 2009 (UTC)

I think that when it comes to spelling and grammatical mistakes on the official articles, it only makes sense that someone with better skills is allowed to fix them. The point of a wikia page is, after all, to provide information to the reader, and not to stroke the ego of the person who wrote it. I've come across several articles where the writing was either child-like or illegible, and I don't mean to offend any writers when I say this. As long as the information is kept constant, no one should complain. We should strive to have the clearest information, and not be fighting over smaller issues.

A person's own user page should be entirely up to them, though. Sephirona 16:16, November 24, 2009 (UTC)

You shouldn't be looking at talk page comments to correct them in the first place. They do not belong to you and never will. Editing them proves you think they are yours. Also this isn't about article pages Sephirona. It is about talk page comments. Drunk Samurai 17:07, November 24, 2009 (UTC)


 * Huh, if we don't look... How are we suppose to communticate? One-Winged Hawk 17:08, November 24, 2009 (UTC)

You're supposed to read them. You're not supposed to read them just to edit them. Drunk Samurai 17:15, November 24, 2009 (UTC)

Oh, my mistake. For a moment I thought we were talking about actual articles, not the discussion pages of those articles. In that case, I've personally never corrected anybody's comments. It's entirely up to them to type with proper grammar, though it's best they choose to do so as to avoid miscommunication. For purposes of documentation, I'd think it's actually best that another person's comments aren't changed - readers should be concerned with the results of that discussion as editted on the official article, and not what's on the discussion page. Seems like a waste of my time and energy to go around editting how a person chooses to speak on his/her own time, imo. Sephirona 17:28, November 24, 2009 (UTC) Sephirona 17:28, November 24, 2009 (UTC)

How many times do I have to say it Drunk Samurai that I never claimed or thought that I own any user's comments besides my own!? Stop making things up because that's not the case and you will end up exposed in the end!! To the second point you made I don't read them just to edit them rather I edit them for other people's sake so they can read them AND comprehend them.

The same principle we follow to make articles comprehensible applies almost(spelling check only!) to the talk pages were various issues about the articles are discussed and resolved. One of the reasons that these discussions are kept, (then later moved to archives), is that in case a similar problem arises the whole process that lead to the solution won't have to be repeated again.

As I have said already, this is all about the people who don't have English as their primary language and small problems like spelling or grammar keep them away from not understanding the context of a sentence that's been written incorrectly, it all comes down to that. MasterDeva 18:57, November 24, 2009 (UTC)


 * Honnestly I'm not sure it is necessary to add some rules. A bit of common sense allows to judge between vandalism and typo correction. If a user doesn't want his typo corrected, he can undo the edit by himself. In anycase, he is the only one to decide. Kdom 21:04, November 24, 2009 (UTC)


 * Indeed, a written rule isn't exactly a solution to this problem. Simply careful weighing whether the editing of another's comment is spelling correcting or vandalism is needed. Although leaving comments just as they are regardless of spelling in some cases is also kinda a good idea as it won't create problems in the first place.Mugiwara Franky 23:14, November 24, 2009 (UTC)

If you didn't read them just to edit them then you wouldn't be editing them at all. They do not belong to you so you have no right to edit them for any reason. By editing other's talk page comments you claim to own them. It is as simple as that. Drunk Samurai 23:03, November 24, 2009 (UTC)


 * Masterdeva is not claiming ownership. He was just correcting spelling errors in good faith. If he had changed a word like "four" into "fuck" then it would be a problem. What he did was changing words like "fpur" into "four".Mugiwara Franky 23:14, November 24, 2009 (UTC)


 * Editting someone else's comments doesn't constitute a claim of ownership. When you get your papers peer reviewed or corrected by a teacher, they aren't saying "I changed this paper now, so it's partly mine." The text belongs to the original writer, as stated by Creative Commons laws on the internet for intellectual property. There's no need to go around accusing people of claiming something is theirs when they obviously had no intention of doing so.
 * In any case, a better way to correct a passage for documentation, I think, would be to leave the original comment intact, but with a reply next to it that includes all the necessary typo fixes. Just for reference, since an open Wikia can be changed by anyone, drafts of the original content should be made available. Sephirona 23:17, November 24, 2009 (UTC)


 * So, what's the result of the discussion? Is it now allowed to do minor edits in the comments or not? El Chupacabra 15:44, December 3, 2009 (UTC)


 * Give me some time to think how to run a poll then... I've got more then one issue brought up here. :-/ One-Winged Hawk 17:43, December 3, 2009 (UTC)


 * OK, according to the poll closing date the voting's over. What's the result? El Chupacabra 15:30, December 11, 2009 (UTC)

The One Rule to Rule them All
Don't add comments here, I'm just separating this for reading purposes. Here, thats the only thing that we have within our rules to speak of this sort of thing. One-Winged Hawk 22:59, November 23, 2009 (UTC)

Voting Time!!
Please vote on the following issues (each one must be adressed):


 * 1) Should we allow editors to correct the spelling in the following conditions:
 * 2) *User talk page:
 * 3) *Page Talk page:
 * 4) *Documentations:
 * 5) Also, should we be allowed to undo spelling corrections even if its not our own within the allowed editing rights or just our own?

This is how I want us to reply to this, this is both my vote and an example:

Vote 1: User: One-Winged Hawk 17:52, December 3, 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) * No
 * 2) * Yes
 * 3) * No
 * 4) Just our own

Vote 2: User: MasterDeva 22:02, December 3, 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) * Yes
 * 2) * Yes
 * 3) * No
 * 4) Just our own

Vote 3: User:Mugiwara Franky 23:04, December 3, 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) * No
 * 2) * Yes
 * 3) * No
 * 4) Just our own

Vote 4: Drunk Samurai 23:49, December 3, 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) * No
 * 2) * No
 * 3) * No
 * 4) Yes

Vote 5: User:Kaizoku-Hime 23:55, December 3, 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) * No
 * 2) * Yes
 * 3) * No
 * 4) Just our own

Vote 6: User: Sephirona 01:44, December 4, 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) * No
 * 2) * Yes
 * 3) * No
 * 4) Just our own

Vote 7: Coldhandzz 05:06, December 4, 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) * Yes
 * 2) * Yes
 * 3) * No
 * 4) Our Own

Vote 8: El Chupacabra 13:21, December 4, 2009 (UTC) Poll closing date; 10th December.
 * 1) *Yes
 * 2) *Yes
 * 3) *Yes
 * 4) Just our own

Okay someone's pointed out the dates passed, so I'll be summing things up in a mo and counting. One-Winged Hawk 16:42, December 11, 2009 (UTC)

FINAL RESULTS:


 * 1) Should we allow editors to correct the spelling in the following conditions:
 * 2) *User talk page: No
 * 3) *Page Talk page: Yes
 * 4) *Documentations: No
 * 5) Also, should we be allowed to undo spelling corrections even if its not our own within the allowed editing rights or just our own? Just our own.

So in other words from now on, you can only correct the spelling on page talk pages and can only undo your own and no one elses'. This should now be documented, I'll properly write up a guideline around this tomorrow, but at the very base level the issue has been resolved. I must admit, part of me thought when it came to vote, well a talk page is the users to control within a reasonable limit, so I'm glad it came out against allowing others' to alter the spellings. One-Winged Hawk 16:50, December 11, 2009 (UTC)
 * }