32

See the accepted answer on this question: Give user-creation privileges to a user

There's a small mistake (my fault): the .should be *.*. Changing that is only two characters. There's nothing else that warrants editing, yet that small mistake is easily important enough to fix.

Any way around this? Is this rule not a bit too harsh?

2
  • Whee, 22 votes. So, erm, any chance of getting this changed? Would a dialogue or a warning suffice? ("This short edit looks like an annoying nitpick. Please don't, unless it's important.")
    – Steve Bennett
    Feb 18, 2013 at 23:58
  • It's also very often there is only a need to add format to questions (e.g. add preformatted text format). I tried edit a question today to make it easier to read, but decided to let it be because of this rule.
    – 244an
    Feb 21, 2013 at 13:04

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
31

Yes, it is too harsh. Not all valid edits require 6 characters. Same story with comments. Just have a look at how many times we've added something like "(stupid 15 character minimum)" to the end of our comments.

1
  • 6
    Yep, this is a useless rule and reminds me of "Your username must have at least X characters" No it doesn't!
    – gparent
    Feb 12, 2013 at 15:19
15

Are you familar with Unicode?

Throw a few U+200B's onto the end of your answer. Voila, instant 1-character edit.

12
  • 12
    Yeah, excellent - an incentive to reduce the quality of answers :/
    – Steve Bennett
    Feb 11, 2013 at 2:16
  • 3
    Haha, well I theorise that most poor answerers probably dont understand Unicode. If you are smart enough to interpret the instructions above, then you have proven yourself worthy of wielding the power of bypassing the rules.
    – Mark Henderson
    Feb 11, 2013 at 4:47
  • 8
    <!--- HTML Comments also work very well in answers. I'm Just Sayin' --->
    – voretaq7
    Feb 11, 2013 at 16:20
  • Hmmm... that's a whole lot easier to remember than Unicode.
    – John Gardeniers
    Feb 12, 2013 at 1:21
  • 1
    @voretaq7 - I didn't think HTML comments were counted in edits any more?
    – Mark Henderson
    Feb 12, 2013 at 2:24
  • @MarkHenderson they might not be - they do still work on answers though last I checked
    – voretaq7
    Feb 12, 2013 at 3:27
  • 6
    @SteveBennett Look, that's why there's rules, understand? So that you think before you break'em. - Lu-Tze, The Thief of Time.
    – the-wabbit
    Feb 12, 2013 at 11:34
  • I suspect most non-unicode aware users end up padding a few dead spaces at the end of the message. I know I've seen "and padding spaces to get 6 chars" edit comments more than once.
    – Dan Is Fiddling By Firelight
    Feb 12, 2013 at 20:38
  • 2
    @DanNeely - hmm, I was 99% sure that spacing at the end of comments also didn't count (as counts were taken after a trim).
    – Mark Henderson
    Feb 12, 2013 at 22:46
  • @MarkHenderson maybe they closed that loophole at some point; I don't want to create a bogo edit on a real question just to test it.
    – Dan Is Fiddling By Firelight
    Feb 12, 2013 at 23:15
  • 7
    This discussion is hilarious.
    – David W
    Feb 13, 2013 at 3:08
  • 2
    I just want to point out that the second hit I get when I google for u+200b is superuser.com/questions/156640/how-can-i-type-u200b-character :)
    – user
    Feb 17, 2013 at 20:29

You must log in to answer this question.

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