Just realized that my obsessive edit disorder might be related to the culture at my previous company.
During onboarding, there was a section in Notion that explained the culture at the company. In this section, it was mentioned that editing of comments is welcomed and even encouraged. It said something along these lines iirc:
"If you think you can rephrase something in a better way, do it. We welcome editing. We won't see it as you trying to hide mistakes but as you willing to acknowledge your mistakes and correct them. It's always better to rephrase something if you think that gets your point across better."
I think that's when I started to edit absolutely everything if I had the chance to and thought it might improve my comment, lol
But I'm not saying this in a bad way. I think it's a good habit I learned. If I have to say one good thing about my previous company, it was how we organized async communication. Everyone respected each other's time. Basically, we lived and breathed the spirit of Don't ask to ask, just ask. We also used Geekbot for async daily "standups" very effectively and efficiently.
I'm a big fan of tweaking, iterating, editing. I don't see anything sinister in it. Trying to think clearly enough to express yourself well is a virtue.
reply
I should have hashed what I thought you're going to reply and included the hash in my comment.
Because that's very similar to what I thought you would write and the reason I put you into CC to check :)
This is also related to deleting comments for me though. In the past, I saw deleting comments as hiding mistakes. But now I see it more as acknowledging mistakes. Not sure if that makes a lot of sense though. Since I am still hiding the mistake from future readers.
reply
Haha, well, nobody would dispute your prediction even without the hash, I'm too predictable.
reply