What is the problem here?

Question

In this question Remove multiple header from csv file I have been informed that I should go to Meta (Here I am!) by a moderator in the comments (hope that they don't get erased).

So, I wonder: why is the problem that generated such request?

Answer 1

You weren't informed you "should" go to Meta, nor were you in any way requested to. You were told that you have multiple options when you disagree with moderator action and one of them is taking it to Meta:

If you feel you have been ill-treated by me and if you, like you insinuate, believe that I have broken the code of conduct, then do not hesitate to contact a community manager, or bring it up in a post on our Meta site. (source)

In any case, bringing it here is a perfectly fine option, so here goes. The problem here was that you added your own example data to the OP's question that did not actually match what the OP really had. This resulted in people wasting their time on data that don't represent what the OP was working on. This is what we had from the OP:

And this is what you added, based on what you imagined the OP's data would actually be:

date,edate,c1,c2,c3 s date1,e date1,c11,c22,c33
26-12-2022,26-12-2022,1,2,3 26-12-2022,26-12-2022,1,2,3
26-12-2022,26-12-2022,1,2,3 s date,edate,c1,c2,c3 s date1,e
date1,c11,c22,c33 26-12-2022,26-12-2022,1,2,3
26-12-2022,26-12-2022,1,2,3 26-12-2022,26-12-2022,1,2,3 

Desired output:

$ cat outfile s date  edate   c1  c2  c3 s date,edate,c1,c2,c3
26-12-2022,26-12-2022,1,2,3 26-12-2022,26-12-2022,1,2,3
26-12-2022,26-12-2022,1,2,3 26-12-2022,26-12-2022,1,2,3
26-12-2022,26-12-2022,1,2,3 26-12-2022,26-12-2022,1,2,3 

Yes, this is one possible way in which the OP's data might have been provided, but it is equally possible that the actual file was never an ASCII csv file but was a complex xml excel one. Or it could simply be that the fields were quoted. Or, as you yourself suggested in a comment, it could be a live connection to a database:

@roaima Yes, it seems to me that what the OP is seeing in Excel is a data connection to some database, not a text file, not even a plain worksheet. To change the data that such file presents, the database needs changing. That is not a simple task IMO, nor awk, sed or even perl or phyton will help. That is a task for someone that knows what an SQL query is. – QuartzCristal

Therefore, your adding your own version of the OP's data is not helpful and resulted in various people, including yourself, wasting their time trying to parse data that weren't actually what the OP had. Or, at best, data that we cannot be sure were what the OP had.

In fact, given that the OP later included another image, calling it "Actual file headers :", we can be pretty sure that your text version was not even close to what the OP had:

Which also explains why your answer naturally didn't work for them: they had very different data. This is why it is important to not try and put words into the OP's mouth. We try to never change the original data in a question since, unlike answers, we cannot be sure if this is actually what the OP has. Just like we might fix say indentation of a script in a question but would never correct the script's logic or fix any bugs since those could be relevant to the question.

So, in future, please don't change questions unless you are actually sure that you are correct. In cases where we need more data, it is better to wait until said data have been provided.

Answer 2

The question here is "why have I been asked to come here?"

@QuartzCristal @Kusalananda @terdon -- Is it possible that there's been a horrible miscommunication here?

Cutting out some of the (possibly) "extraneous" text from the chat, is there a chance (albeit small) that the following exchange was misunderstood by everyone?

@QuartzCristal: Are you assuming bad faith here ? Bad faith on my part for giving some data that (hopefully) would be useful to someone else....

@Kusalananda: If you feel you have been ill-treated by me and if you, like you insinuate, believe that I have broken the code of conduct, then ...

I've read through both the chat as well as the image that @terdon provided of the deleted comments, and I don't see anything that you (QuartzCristal) said that indicated you believed @Kusalananda broke the Code of Conduct. It's clear that you were agitated/frustrated with the edit rollback, as well as the deletion of comments, but nothing ever, that I can see, approached the level of saying (or even insinuating) that there was a Code of Conduct violation.

However, I don't know how common, worldwide the phrase (idiom), "assuming bad faith" is. If @Kusalananda wanted to confirm its meaning and happened to type that into Google, the first result that comes up is:

The malicious intention to be dishonest or to violate the law ...

That could be taken to read your statement as, "Are you maliciously intending to be dishonest?"

Now that's a bad Google result, IMHO, because that's the definition of "bad faith", not "assuming bad faith".

But if it was read that way, even out of context, then that might explain the "escalation" asking you you to bring a discussion of @Kusalananda's actions here on Meta.

---

As for the topic that was being discussed in the comments, perhaps I can provide a different perspective, and as simply a community member here that wasn't involved in the changes.

IMHO (and this runs counters to the current community consensus) edits to a question should never include "image to text" conversion/translation -- I believe the OP should include the actual data whenever possible as copy/paste. Retyping can introduce errors and/or make assumptions about the data that aren't valid (as appears to be the case here). Stack Overflow even uses edits like this as an audit mechanism. There have been multiple people who have posted in MSO after their edit-review-queue privileges were suspended for approving an edit like yours!

Again, with that said, that's Stack Overflow policy; not U&L.

In this case, it seems that it was opinion of the Mod team that your transcription may not have been faithful to the original data. Edits that change the meaning of a post are not allowed.

The OP's subsequent edit was not IMHO any implicit "acceptance" of your edit. As @Kusalananda mentioned, it could have been that the OP just needed to get your edit out of the way in order to make their next edit. Regardless, the right course of action was to revert your edit back to the image. This is what @Kusalananda did once aware that you were the source of the text-data (rather than the OP) and that your edit made assumptions about the data that may or may not have been the case.

From comments:

for whatever reason you didn't like my comments, so, they got removed. That part is completely clear to me. What is amazing is the reasoning used to explain it.

At this point, you do seem to be approaching the point of accusing the Mods of some level of wrongdoing.

But yes, once that rollback was taken care of it's completely normal for Mods to clean up the comments which refer to "completed actions." I see no malicious intent there.