Question Editor Added 'Run Code Snippet' Markdown but Broke OP's Code

Question

I am very concerned about this edit which added the code snippet markup, but completely broke the CSS by adding spaces and breaking lines that the OP didn't put or have their original question, like this;

 background - color: red;
}#
company {
 width: 50 % ;

I don't know, but the uniformity of these goof-ups makes me think the user ran a script to do the editing for them. The user (<2k rep) has had 730 approved edits and 100 rejected edits.

If the user is running a script, I suspect a lot of work has gone into cleaning up the problems of the script - and perhaps worse, some edits may have been left in situ and have at best misrepresented the OPs, or at worst had some users attempt to use the broken code (especially if the question had already been answered and the broken code was not mentioned)!

There seemed to be no benefit of adding the code snippet feature anyway.

I've since edited the question to fix the problems that were caused by this edit.

Should anyone "tell him off"? This seems to be a case of unintended vandalism.

• Cerbrus: I think it would be a good idea to at least notify the editor of the flaws in his edit.
• Spokey: Looking at the markdown we can see that the CSS is under <!-- language: lang-js --> meaning that the user pasted the CSS in the JavaScript area and used the Tidy button (that added the extra spaces because to formtted it as JS)
• msrd0: I don't think that there is a script running. If I see awful formatted Java question, I copy+paste the code into Eclipse and let it format the code

Answer 1

I think this was just a case of human error.

I checked the first two page of recent edits. The changes were largely fixes to code formatting or inserting images. There were 5 rejections, but they all had to do with conflicting edits (4 were automatically rejected by the system). Most of the edits I saw were mere minutes after the OP had gone up.

I think this is a case of over enthusiasm more than some kind of automated rep farming.