7

I'm editing a post, I spend a few minutes making changes, and I go to save it. I get an error message that simply says that I've made "too many recent edits". I don't even know what that means, aside from the obvious of hitting some kind of limiting cap.

enter image description here

  • How many edits is too many? Is it per day or some other unit of time?
  • When will I be able to edit again?
  • Why can't I even edit my own post to make it better (I can see limiting the editing of others posts)?
  • Why did I get to the edit page and be able to spend time making changes if I'll be greeted with a (useless) error message at the end?

The edit restrictions are probably global, as is the ability to reach an edit page and make changes if you can't actually publish them, but could the error message be updated? I'm not sure if that's a global thing or a site-specific thing (if it's global, perhaps kick this over to Meta.SO). The only thing I know is that the message as it's shown here on Programmers is pretty useless (which is surprising considering the clarify of other error messages and notifications).

3
  • 1
    We've made the UI a bit more verbose now; thanks for the feedback.
    – Marc Gravell
    Sep 28, 2011 at 11:50
  • @Marc I don't have any posts to edit (nor do I have the time or desire to do so), but what does it look like now? More like the text on the MSO question posted by Mark?
    – Thomas Owens Mod
    Sep 28, 2011 at 11:52
  • 1
    yes; not quite the full text (for space reasons), but it has numbers etc ;p
    – Marc Gravell
    Sep 28, 2011 at 11:59

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
4

To clarify what's going on, from Meta Stack Overflow:

That code was (correctly) not counting recent (today/yesterday) posts in the "how many have you edited" [...]

This sanity check avoids a few scenarios:

  • front-page spamming
  • hijacked account vandalism
  • rage-quit vandalism

We don't have any objection to improving posts, and yes: it is meant to have an amnesty on anything recent (so you can improve your recent answers).

So if you're just improving posts in the last day, you should be fine. If you're trying to edit a ton of your old posts in rapid succession, that's by design.

As the message says, you should be contacting a moderator if you have a need to revise your posts en masse. Is there a reason you're trying to edit more than 5 of your old posts in rapid succession?

Edit

Just to encapsulate what I said in comments, an error message that only reads "too many recent edits" does seem to be overly brief. The original message read:

Too many edits

You have already edited 5 of your own posts today (not including very recent posts). Further edits are not allowed until tomorrow.

Please contact a moderator if you require assistance.

Which clarified what was going on. To that end, I agree that should be changed or addressed.

5
  • 1
    Cleaning up grammar/spelling in a few, adding links or references to books/articles I just read. Nothing malicious, aside from the fact that they cause old questions to get bumped to the top. I just wonder if this is a case of "the system" being broken - should old posts with minor edits (judged based on characters added/removed, perhaps) actually be bumped and count against those limits? Either way, the error message on Programmers is far less specific than the one posted about on Meta.SO, so that should probably be looked at. It just says "too many recent edits (click here to dismiss)".
    – Thomas Owens Mod
    Sep 27, 2011 at 22:45
  • 1
    @ThomasOwens Ah yeah, if it's not the wording as on MSO, that's a bug. Not measuring edits by substantiality when checking for things like this is likely by design: adding "I hate puppies" to every answer would be insubstantial but still be abuse.
    – user8
    Sep 27, 2011 at 22:49
  • I just read Meta - makes sense, but the bug should be kicked off to someone. I'm not sure who fixes such things, though. But it is, by far, the least helpful error message I've ever seen on any SE site. Most are pretty good and tell you what limits you hit or why your action is invalid. This one just slipped through, I guess. Also, I'm adding a pic to the question just so everyone can see what it looks like (at least prior to fixing), kind of a paper trail thing.
    – Thomas Owens Mod
    Sep 27, 2011 at 22:53
  • 1
    @ThomasOwens I've passed it along, but SE employees do read our meta, so they will see this.
    – user8
    Sep 27, 2011 at 22:55
  • The message is more verbose now.
    – Marc Gravell
    Sep 28, 2011 at 11:50

You must log in to answer this question.

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