Dos and don'ts for experts

Question

Although it still says "registered user", after nearly nine years, I topped 6000 today and noticed I now have editing privileges. I have a few questions regarding such things.

What is appropriate and inappropriate use of such privileges? I could guess what's not, but I don't want to overuse it to the point it becomes a problem. I used to edit Wikipedia, and that would find me editing some 50 pages a day just to make everything pristine and fully proofread. (Yes, I read the rules and I imagine that making posts conform with them is what the function is mostly for.)

So basically, what's overkill?

Comments

I’ve personally only ever used the editing powers to fix grammar / spelling mistakes, removing exceptionally unnecessary text, and retagging (except when we were messing with that one spammer’s 30-something dupe account).
I would define “exceptionally unnecessary text” as something without any relation whatsoever to the question. Stuff like “btw, why can’t I upvote?” or “it wouldn’t let me use x tag” (in the latter, be sure to add that tag, as well). Although, I’m usually pretty reluctant to completely remove an entire sentence like that, sticking with a “when in doubt, leave it in” mentality.
For questions with absolutely terrible grammar, sometimes it is necessary to almost completely rewrite it. In these cases, I always try to keep as close to the original wording as possible, for example: https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/revisions/334248
Pretty much, just use common sense. I generally try to use my editing abilities quite sparsely if I can.

I was considering making this an answer, but decided to leave it as a comment so that other experts (and Fizz) can chip in if they want.

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grats btw

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Just added the formal expert title to your account, so you can use your powers anywhere. Grats :)
I'll write a comprehensive response to this later today. I was meaning to write something like this for both experts and editors around the time we do the next lot of promotions (i.e. soon!), but I can definitely do one half of that now.

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You're the 60th expert. The entire first page is now full of experts.

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Still going to reply to this. I had less time than I expected yesterday. Apologies!

Answer 1

Summary:

• Any edit that makes a post more readable, easier to understand, or less cluttered is a good edit. PokeBase threads should be clean and accessible to readers years in the future -- your job is to make sure everything looks proofread and presentable.
• Your powers are there to be used. If you see something that could be improved, edit it. Trust your judgement -- you have this role because you know what you're doing.
• Don't change the underlying contents of a post. You can add little details for clarity, but don't turn other people's posts into your own posts (in that case, just make your own post). Correct factual inaccuracies using comments, not edits.

If you're not feeling confident about something, feel free to ask questions to staff (or another expert who has experience). You can also flag posts if you want staff to look at them.

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Do

• Set an example with your own posts on the site. If new users see experts making well-presented and helpful posts, then they will do the same.
• Correct grammar and spelling errors in other people's posts. You be the judge of what's too pedantic.
• Edit old posts. It IS worth fixing old posts. Many people read them.
• Add paragraph breaks to big chunks of text and split long sentences into shorter ones to increase readability. Punctuation is good.
• Ignore people who get offended that you had to fix their grammar, or whatever.
• Change question titles so that they make each thread unique and identifiable. Question titles should be proper sentences (i.e. not fragmented or abbreviated) and they should not capitalise every word. Move excess detail into the question description. Remove rubbish like "Please help!!!!!"
• Convert answers to comments if they are uncertain, don't have sufficient detail, or don't address the question. Be careful with this power, as it can't be undone. Some posts might be worthy of a down-vote, but still make a clear effort at answering the question.
• Also convert answers to comments where people are trying to reply to each other. Be careful to choose the right destination in the dropdown.
• If you convert an answer to a comment, and said answer has a long chain of comments on it, it's helpful to leave a comment yourself explaining that you converted the answer. The "moved" comments mix with the existing comments, which can make the thread confusing to read.
• If you feel the need, leave a wall post to people if you convert their posts. (I do this if I convert the same person's posts multiple times, because then it's obvious they can't find the comment button.)
• Remove formatting abuse from people's posts. For example: convert all-caps posts to sentence case, remove bold+italics when people apply it to their entire post, etc.
• Remove parts of people's posts where they ask for up-votes or ask not to be down-voted. Also, remove trade requests, links to illegal websites, and anything else that tries to dodge the main rules list.
• Improve tags on people's posts. Add tags for the key aspects of the question, if they're missing. Remove joke tags (and generally, any tags that don't have a purpose categorising the question). Extremely vague tags like "suggestion" on the RMT section are also not useful.
• If an answer is very obviously copy-pasted or taken from a particular source, try to find the source and link it in the post. (Answers that are self-evident or work using common knowledge don't need references.)
• Re-size any images that are noticeably large. Here is a guide to achieving this by changing the syntax used to add the image. You could also re-size the picture by uploading it to an image-hosting website.
• Remove images that add nothing valuable to the post. Sprites on moveset answers look nice, but random gifs from the anime at the bottom of people's posts are annoying.
• We don't have post signatures on the Q&A (deliberately). Remove those if you see them.
• Remove random off-topic parts of people's posts. (Example: in this post, there is no need to talk about whether cats are smarter than dogs, or Leafeon's similarities to your pet cat.)
• Update broken links. In particular, try to replace images that are no longer showing up properly. (Images get taken off certain hosting services, and some old sprite resources like pokecheck.com have expired.)
• Add formatting to posts if you think it would make them more readable. Don't go overboard with this.
• Fix broken formatting. Changes to the Markdown interpreter in recent years have caused some formatting to stop working properly, e.g. blockquoting now requires a space after the >. Also, help people who clearly aren't very good at adding images, or accidentally invoke code blocks by using too many spaces.
• If you're feeling kind, change any sprites you see to pokemondb.net to reduce people's data transfer costs. :-)

Don't

• Edit anything you'd be annoyed about had it been applied to your own post.
• Convert every answer you don't like to a comment. An incorrect answer still belongs as an answer, as long as it makes an effort to resolve the whole question.
• Change the content or nature of a post to the point it's no longer the same post. Remember that what you're editing still belongs to someone else; you're there to make sure it's presented in the best way possible.
• Mini-mod (i.e. order people around). You can help out by leaving flags, explaining how the site works in wall posts, etc. but please leave final decisions to editors+. (In particular -- and this goes for everybody -- don't de-rail posts discussing whether they're allowed!)
• Use your title to leverage nastiness toward people. Having auth doesn't make you more important than other people.
• Edit many posts in a very short period of time (how many edits would you scroll past in "all activity" before you got a bit annoyed?)

Comments

Couple things from me with regards to this as well;
- I'd argue that you leave really old posts alone for the most part; it clogs activity feed, and it adds no real value, but again, personal discretion.
- Don't overdo the editting. Fizz brought up a lot of excellent points with regards to what you can change - ie. sprites, grammar, formatting, extranuous images etc. etc., but do remember that you aren't the user's grandmother. It's not a bad thing to be helpful, but ultimately, the responsibility is on the user, not you, to make sure the post is appropriate/easily understandable; ie. don't create a misunderstanding of responsibility by constantly & repeatedly overfixing a specific user's posts.
- If you can't understand it, chances are, other people can't. Tell a mod/editor and we'll help with it if it appears to be a load of unintelligable gibberish,  but could still be a legitimate post.  Pretty much, don't be afraid to ask for help, we're all potatoes here.

And a bit of an expansion, since on Fizz's first "don't" since he mentioned promotion rounds later too;
Sometimes users get annoyed over small things; you editting their question and removing/fixing certain parts, flagging the question, commenting something that's not completely positive, or if you become an editor/mod, for hiding and using admin powers. Just ignore it honestly; both Fizz and I have over 100 pages of wall posts, and a solid chunk of it is probably people complaining. You're doing a great job trust me!

That said, congratulations to Stellar, and any future experts/promotions.

Oblitigary comment, that my pet dropbear is far superior to Fizz's pet dropbear.