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A recent question has gone through an aggressive and almost continuous revision process even though:

  • An answer was posted soon after the question was posted
  • OP was reminded several times on this question as well as on previous question to not make extensive changes to questions after people begin to post answers.
  • OP asked a similar concurrent question to expand the argument, self-deleted it, then again asked yet another question, which was quickly marked as a duplicate.
  • OP then expanded the "centrifugal" argument back under my question again.

I feel that in this case this went way too far, and some kind of clear explanation can be made why this activity (which looks like arguing or debating to me) is not the proper way to use Stack Exchange posts.

Questions should not evolve or morph this extensively.

The edit history of the first three days (90 hours) can be seen there. Here I'll just capture the changes in the title of the question. Kudos for the OP to work hard to maintain the title as a reflection of the current question whatever it happens to be, but this many different titles gives insight into how large and frequent the changes were.

Question: Did the editing of this post go way overboard, like "six-sigma" overboard? If so, how can this be explained in a way that the OP can understand?

 edit  hours    title
 26.   88.9    Did von Kármán ever say that the centrifugal force could be ignored for his definition?
 25.   85.9    Did von Kármán himself ever use the  horizontal line for his definition?
 24.   76.5    An airplane at the altitude of the Kármán line can't ignore the centrifugal force, can it?
 23.   76.1    An airplane at the altitude of the Kármán line can't ignore the centrifugal force, can he?
 22.   75.2    An airplane at the  altitude of the Kármán line  can't ignore the centrifugal force
 17.   73.4    Could the  definition of the Kármán line be described considering an airplane in orbit?
 16.   51.0    Why, at the altitude of the Kármán line, should a plane have to fly in a  straight line?
 15.   50.5    Could, at the altitude of the Kármán line a plane fly in a circular orbit?
 14.   47.7    Why, at the altitude of the Kármán line would a plane have to fly in a straight line?
 13.   45.9    Why at the altitude of the Kármán line  will a plane have to fly in a straight line?
 11.   39.3    Why should the Kármán line not be a realistic, curved one around the Earth?
 10.   24.9    Why should the Kármán line not be a realistic, curve band around the Earth?
  9.   24.6    Why should the Kármán line not be a realistic, curved line?
  7.   18.4    Why not interpret the Kármán line as a realistic, curved line?
  3.   14.4    Potential merits for a realistic definition of the Kármán line?
  2.    9.9  * Potential merits of different definition for a Kármán-like line?
  1.    0.0    Why not choose a more realistic definition of the Kármán line?

 * my suggested improved titled wording
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    $\begingroup$ Without looking at the edits in detail, I can say just based on the titles alone that things appear to have gone overboard. I have closed the question as unclear and directed discussion here. $\endgroup$
    – called2voyage Mod
    Commented Oct 23, 2018 at 12:51
  • $\begingroup$ @called2voyage I changed the question so many times because at first it appeared from the answers that the essence of my question was not understood or deliberately ignored just to get as much votes as possible while not caring about the question itself. $\endgroup$
    – Cornelis
    Commented Oct 23, 2018 at 16:45
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    $\begingroup$ @Conelisinspace Again, without looking into the meat of the posts in detail (short on time), I would suggest that you may have reached a point where perhaps you should abandon this post and try to ask a different question in a new post to get the information you seek--maybe even checking with others in chat or here in meta first to make sure your new question will be well received. Now, if that generic advice doesn't apply here, perhaps some others can offer better suggestions, that's why I directed the conversation here. $\endgroup$
    – called2voyage Mod
    Commented Oct 23, 2018 at 16:53
  • $\begingroup$ @called2voyage I couldn't abandon my question because it had already an answer that was considered too important to delete. $\endgroup$
    – Cornelis
    Commented Oct 23, 2018 at 17:04
  • $\begingroup$ Very good that you have done this ! $\endgroup$
    – Cornelis
    Commented Oct 23, 2018 at 19:15
  • $\begingroup$ @uhoh To make your story complete, you should show your answer, that was removed when i flagged it because it wasn't about my question but about the non-existence of the centrifugal force and the "line". $\endgroup$
    – Cornelis
    Commented Oct 23, 2018 at 22:59

1 Answer 1

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Yes

That's quite a revision list from the OP. Everything is fine up until Revision 7, where the title is changed from

Potential merits for a realistic definition of the Kármán line?

to

Why not interpret the Kármán line as a realistic, curved line?

There's several revisions to that second thought before we get to Revision 13

Why, at the altitude of the Kármán line, will a plane have to fly in a straight line?

And again at Revision 22

An airplane at the altitude of the Kármán line can't ignore the centrifugal force

Until we finally come to rest at Revision 27

Did von Kármán ever write that the centrifugal force could be ignored for his definition?

There's way too much change there. That's 5 separate questions. From another Meta

Drastically changing a question - especially one with answers - is not something we want to allow. In the first place it invalidates all the work the answerer(s) put into their answer(s) and could, in extremis, result in them getting undeserved down-votes.

We see that at play here. Neither answer fits the current title now. Ideally we should roll this back to Revision 6, and the original question.

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  • $\begingroup$ To be honest, i deliberately changed the last question to get rid of it ! I had enough of it to get answers that get votes while they don't go to the essence of my question ! $\endgroup$
    – Cornelis
    Commented Oct 23, 2018 at 19:08
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    $\begingroup$ @Conelisinspace If you're not comfortable with rolling back to the original question, you should delete the question (requesting a mod to delete, if necessary). $\endgroup$
    – called2voyage Mod
    Commented Oct 23, 2018 at 19:35
  • $\begingroup$ @O.k.understood, but like i wrote before, my question got a quick answer with several votes, so i could not delete it, i got the message that valuable information would get lost. Thanks for letting me know what the possibilities are. $\endgroup$
    – Cornelis
    Commented Oct 23, 2018 at 22:37

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