---
title: I went back and fixed the commas
description: >-
  Four of my Stack Overflow answers got edited years after I wrote them. Every single edit was
  grammar. The advice I left exactly where it was.
url: https://expiredqueues.com/answers-i-went-back-to-fix/
date: '2026-05-16T10:00:00.000Z'
image: https://expiredqueues.com/images/og/answers-i-went-back-to-fix-51b8e48c.jpg
---

Retrospect posts stack-overflow

# I went back and fixed the commas

16 May 2026 By Adrian 3 min read

Of the sixty-four answers I have on Stack Overflow, ten were edited after posting. Six of those were same-day typo fixes, the kind you make before the coffee goes cold.

The other four are the interesting ones.

Days before the last edit

1. **3,424**
2. **2,860**
3. **1,834**
4. **1,448**

1) **Viewport meta** Sep 2013\
   Feb 2023
2) **Empty class** Jun 2015\
   Apr 2023
3) **Two-column** Jun 2015\
   Jun 2020
4) **Image sizing** Oct 2013\
   Sep 2017

Gap between posting an answer and the last time anyone edited it.

Nearly ten years, in the worst case. Something touched a 2013 answer in February 2023.

One caveat before I go further, because I do not want to claim more than I know. Stack Overflow lets anybody with enough reputation edit your posts, and the timestamp only records the last edit, not who made it. Some of these were me - I remember going back at some point and cleaning up the grammar, because my English in 2013 was not what it is now and eventually I could not stand looking at it. Others may well have been strangers tidying up after me. I cannot tell the two apart from the data, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

What I can say is what nobody did, me included: whoever was in there, the advice came out the other side unchanged.

That is the bit I keep chewing on. Somebody had the answer open. Somebody was already typing in it. And nobody stopped to ask whether the thing it was telling people was still true.

So let me do that now.

## Still fine

**[Is an empty `class` attribute valid HTML?](https://stackoverflow.com/a/30749192)** - Yes, and it still is. I ran it through the W3C validator before answering, which is more rigour than thirteen-year-old me usually applied. Nothing to change.

**[Odd margin between inline-block elements](https://stackoverflow.com/a/18927094)** - The whitespace gap is real and `font-size: 0` on the parent still kills it. But you would not hit this today, because you would have reached for flexbox and never seen the gap in the first place. Correct, and irrelevant. Those are different things.

**[Why is box-sizing acting different on table vs div?](https://stackoverflow.com/a/19069106)**

- The observation holds. The explanation was me guessing out loud, and I said so in the answer: "FYI, I didn't find it anywhere document." Five upvotes for an honest shrug. I will take it.

## Dead

**[Bootstrap 3 navbar active class](https://stackoverflow.com/a/19095814)** - "Add `.navbar-default`." That class does not exist past Bootstrap 3. Seven points for advice with a [hard expiry date](https://expiredqueues.com/answers-need-expiry-dates/), and 35,000 people have read it since.

**[Modal open on page load](https://stackoverflow.com/a/20878053)** - I told people to fake it with `.modal.in` and hand-place a backdrop div. Bootstrap 4 renamed `in` to `show` and the whole trick collapses. It was a hack when I wrote it, and now it is a hack that does not work.

## The one that bothers me

**[Meta viewport tag being ignored](https://stackoverflow.com/a/19080745)** - 88,000 views, and the core advice is still right: set `width=device-width, initial-scale=1`, do not hard-code widths.

Then I added this:

> And if you wanted disable zoom feature, set `user-scalable=no`

In 2013 that was routine. Everybody did it. It is also the single most user-hostile line in anything I have published - you are taking pinch-to-zoom away from people who need it, on a phone, permanently. [iOS Safari has ignored it for years](https://expiredqueues.com/stop-zoom-in-on-input-focus-on-mobile-devices/) precisely because enough developers like me kept shipping it.

That answer was edited in February 2023. The prose around that line got tidied. The line stayed.

## Why this happens

Nobody edits a thing that is not broken. And "outclassed" does not feel broken - the Bootstrap 3 answer still worked, for anyone still on Bootstrap 3. The viewport answer still worked. So there is no moment where you sit up and think, right, time to revise.

Grammar, though - grammar nags. Grammar you can see from across the room, and you can fix it without knowing anything about the subject. That is exactly why it gets fixed and the advice does not.

Which is how a decade-old answer with 88,000 readers ends up with tidy commas and bad advice.

[Previously Six weeks in 2013](https://expiredqueues.com/six-weeks-in-2013/) [Next Every answer needs an expiry date](https://expiredqueues.com/answers-need-expiry-dates/)

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