Nitpicking word-choice

Question

There are many times that a question contains questionable word-choice. One example on my mind right now is a question about the direction to face during prayer. The question assumes that one must face towards Jerusalem, when, in reality, it could just say, "the correct direction," since, in some instances (without getting into specifics), Jerusalem may not be the correct direction to face. In fact, this is the premise of that particular question, but that question isn't really relevant to this one; it's just an example that comes to mind.

My question is, in a case of poor, or imprecise, word-choice by the OP, should we nitpick in the comments to prod the OP to improve the question, or should we just let it go and hope that the answer(s) provided will point out and correct the assumptions/statements in the question?

Answer 1

If you're confident that you understand the intent of the question and an edit would greatly clarify that intent, then edit - that's why we have this functionality and it's a critical feature to community-curated Q&A.

That's the decisive factor, being able to preserve the intent of the original author post-edit, or the line between bringing out the meaning vs. completely changing it. A bit of a subjective call at times, but that's why we have the ability to roll back edits that turned out not to be as helpful as the editor hoped.

Try to actively avoid nit-picking in comments unless you're simply not sure enough of what they're trying to ask in order to edit confidently to fix the wording. If you're headed to comments, it should generally be along the line of "I can't make out what you're trying to ask. I think you're heading in [direction], can you confirm? I can help you clarify this once you do."