Why are canned responses an option for reviewers of suggested edits?

Someone rejected my edits with a canned response while the answer in question linked to an inaccurate/nonworking demo.

Now I'm not saying my edits were perfect but I have no idea which part of the canned response this reviewer had in mind when he clicked it.

Seems to me if someone takes the time to improve an answer the least a reviewer can do is give some meaningful feedback to an edit not up to par.

Link for reference: https://stackoverflow.com/review/suggested-edits/22433080

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    I don't think the issue here is with the existence of canned reasons (they're helpful to keep reviewers from having to type out the same thing over and over again every single time a bad edit comes up), but just that the reason given in this case is wrong - your edit looks fine to me. (note that the edit was approved) – CertainPerformance Mar 11 at 21:16
  • i.imgur.com/mZZTRXG.jpg – jjrabbit Mar 11 at 21:23
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    @jjrabbit then you won't get a reason at all. – TheWanderer Mar 11 at 21:25
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    Your edit was approved overall, that is why we have more then one reviewer to review stuff. You are now going to publicly shame every user who doesn't follow the majority? Tricky practice. Let's not do that. The canned response is fine, they felt your edit changed too much. The other reviewers did pay attention. Let's move one, shall we? – rene Mar 11 at 21:28
  • @TheWanderer I'm saying a rejection should require a typed answer to 1) give valuable feedback to the editor 2) prevent reviewers from accidentally giving the wrong reason – jjrabbit Mar 11 at 21:38
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    @jjrabbit requiring custom feedback for every single rejection will result in either a lot of simple "." responses, a drop in reviews, frustrated users taking it out on the user suggesting the edit, a userscript to bring back the canned versions, or some combination of these. It's a similar rationale to why downvotes don't require explanatory comments. Reviewers always have the option of leaving a custom reason if none of the presets work, but forcing its usage doesn't make sense. – TheWanderer Mar 11 at 21:53
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    @jjrabbit how would this prevent wrong reasons? – Luca Kiebel Mar 11 at 22:04
  • @TheWanderer then maybe those aren't the people we want doing the reviews? – jjrabbit Mar 11 at 23:27
  • The guy made a mistake. Has nothing to do with the existence of canned responses or not. What if the guy clicked reject, and manually posted that text (if there was no canned response to choose from). You'd be ok with that? Cause you don't say the problem is the guy was wrong. You say the issue is the response being canned. If we remove that, you're ok with the situation? – Patrice Mar 11 at 23:38
  • @rene you completely missed the point and you make a lot of assumptions. – jjrabbit Mar 11 at 23:38
  • @LucaKiebel It would force the reviewer to come up with an actual reason for the rejection instead of giving them an easy out (randomly click one). – jjrabbit Mar 11 at 23:43
  • @Patrice How do you figure? And no if they're manually spamming the text then that doesn't solve anything. I guess the real solution is to flag unproductive rejections. – jjrabbit Mar 11 at 23:47
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    @jjrabbit then maybe switch your discourse and question to that? And how do I figure what? That the guy made a mistake? Cause you consider him being wrong. Cause I would have accepted the edit. How do I figure 'you'd be ok with that'? Cause that's what reading your question makes me understand. you talk about the canned responses being a problem. In fact you want a feedback mechanism for the review queues. Both are valid questions, but it pays in being clear imho :) – Patrice Mar 11 at 23:51
  • @Patrice yea i honed in on the wrong thing in this thread. i'll leave it up as a reminder. – jjrabbit Mar 11 at 23:54
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    @jjrabbit You made two edit suggestions, in the whole life of your account. Both were approved. In the second one, seeing that there was one disagreement, you came to meta rejecting the whole system of canned comments. It is not an assumption to believe you would make a fuss about it each time, literally the second edit you made in your whole life prompted you to ask this question. In comparison, most people you have interacted with here, have made thousands (this word is not an exageration) of edits, and reviewed thousands of edits suggestions (again, this is not an exageration). – Félix Gagnon-Grenier Mar 12 at 14:30

Canned responses are a thing for three reasons:

  1. It provides "just-in-time" education for reviewers about the reasons for which a proposed edit should be rejected.

  2. It saves folks a lot of time and typing.

  3. It ensures that most rejection reasons are helpful, polite, and coherent. If you just give people an empty textbox to type into, well, let's just say there's a fairly poor chance of gems being consistently produced.

It isn't the canned responses that are a problem. It's the fact that people choose the wrong reasons. That wouldn't be addressed by removing the canned responses.

  • Very good answer. What if there was a feedback system in place for people who choose the wrong reasons? – jjrabbit Mar 11 at 23:14
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    Who would review that feedback and make sure it is valid, @jjrabbit? This idea of review queues for the review queues gets suggested periodically, but it never seems to be thoroughly considered. If you see users who repeatedly make bad decisions when reviewing, raise a flag for moderator attention and point us to specific examples. – Cody Gray Mar 11 at 23:34
  • Yea not sure, I was just thinking out loud here. How do I flag a rejection I disagree with? Also, why doesn't typing @ let me select your name here? @cody gray – jjrabbit Mar 12 at 0:11
  • You have to just flag a post (any old post will do; pick one of your own, or one by the reviewer you want to bring to our attention). Pick the "in need of moderator attention" option, and include links to the reviews you want to highlight, along with an explanation of why you're flagging (i.e., what part are you concerned about). You don't need to explicitly ping me. It's my answer; I get notified of all comments on it. That's why the system doesn't suggest me as pingable. @jjr – Cody Gray Mar 12 at 0:53
  • Isn't the flag tied to that particular post though? Seems kind of roundabout to navigate to a a random post to flag something completely unrelated. I suppose it would work though. Thanks for explaining the names, makes sense. – jjrabbit Mar 12 at 10:23
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    Yes, it is somewhat roundabout. That's why you have to make sure that your flag message is clear, so that we understand what you're actually flagging. It is totally a hack, but it's the standard recommended practice until we get a way to flag specific reviews. @jjr – Cody Gray Mar 12 at 18:35

Let's first acknowledge that your edit was approved.

"[...] but I have no idea which part of the canned response this reviewer had in mind when he clicked it."

Did you actually try and think about each part to see if it applies?

This is the canned rejection reason:


  • "easier to read": the new post is not easier to read, the answer was already fairly easy to read to begin with. This part applies.
  • "easier to find": The tags are exactly the same, the wording has simply been moved. It's not easier to find either.
  • "more accurate": You added the detail that most html elements can be modified with that, but it was not exactly inaccurate to begin with. That partly applies.
  • "more accessible": Nothing in the post is more accessible. That also applies.

Literally all four points apply, either in full or in part to your edit. It's ok that it was accepted, as the snippet is indeed fine, but there would be no real loss if it hadn't. Maybe try a bit harder to read and think about canned messages next time.

  • 3/4 of those are going to apply on almost any edit. You could literally choose this canned response on 99% of edits and something would apply. How is that useful? – jjrabbit Mar 11 at 22:36
  • @jjrabbit fair - there are way too many unnecessary edits, I'd not say 99% but a lot. – Alexei Levenkov Mar 11 at 22:50
  • @AlexeiLevenkov that's not what i meant – jjrabbit Mar 11 at 23:25
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    @jjrabbit I don't know what you exactly meant... "on 99% of edits something would apply" can either mean "rules are too broad and cover way to many solid edits that bring barely acceptable posts to be shining examples of SO questions" or "rules are fine but there are way to many edits that change ok post to equally ok post and waste time of 3-5 people to review that"... I think you consider rules to be bad because they don't encourage small edits - that's perfectly fine opinion to have... but it does not align with SO guidance on what is substantial edit. – Alexei Levenkov Mar 12 at 0:04
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    @jjrabbit Yes, either of these 4 reasons can apply on a lot of edits, but all four will not. If a human being can't be arsed to read the comment, and think about which one of a limited set of four reasons actually applies to their post, I seriously doubt they have the ability to improve posts in the first place. – Félix Gagnon-Grenier Mar 12 at 0:37
  • @FélixGagnon-Grenier Listen obviously not all four points apply here if the edits were approved so quit acting like this is a cut and dry case. The issue here is that the reviewer did not apply all four points correctly when he submitted the canned response. The reviewer (like you) made a mistake in how the points should be applied. In your case you don't understand what more accurate means. It doesn't imply the answer was inaccurate to begin with, that's not a prerequisite. But let's pretend it does mean that, well the original answer links to bad info so no it doesn't partly apply here sorry – jjrabbit Mar 12 at 9:27

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