I just reviewed an edit on a question and I was the only one who approved the edit. The other reviewers rejected the edit with the following message:


The edit included an added question mark, some additional uppercase letters, but no real changes like improved formatting or completely new formulations.

The edit does not make the even a little bit easier to read, easier to find, more accurate or more accessible, and I can totaly live with this, but the edit is correct and does not make it worse so why should it be rejected?

  • Review in question: stackoverflow.com/review/suggested-edits/6814552 – user247702 Jan 22 '15 at 9:59
  • @Stijn I updated the link to match yours. Thank you. – Fabio Poloni Jan 22 '15 at 10:00
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    It's useless, requires the time of at least 3 reviewers, and gains the user 2 rep when accepted. Do you want people to gain privileges because they fix a few stray commas here and there and thereby waste time of edit reviewers? It's even worse when the edited post is a low-quality question, as the question is still crap after the edit, and is bumped back on the front page, thereby wasting the time of even more people. – l4mpi Jan 22 '15 at 10:05
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    There is plenty left to fix even after the suggestions. That puts it on the edge for me. – Bart Jan 22 '15 at 10:06
  • @l4mpi I didn't know that, but that really makes sense. It seems weird to me, that you get reputation for this. – Fabio Poloni Jan 22 '15 at 10:10
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    Well, it's intended as a reward for a good, substantial edit, which is a positive contribution and should be rewared. The problem is that too many people do extremely minor edits like the one above, or edit posts that are inherently bad and can't be fixed with an edit (nobody cares if the off-topic resource request has typos in it, it's going to be closed and deleted anyways). As those people are enabled by bad reviewers, and lately even by the system itself (the "too minor" rejection reason was removed), it's unlikely this will ever get better. – l4mpi Jan 22 '15 at 10:16

That post can definitely use some edits. And I have no problem with users without full editing privileges to suggest such edits. But the suggestion has to be as near to complete/perfect as it can get. Why?

  1. You're asking at least 2 (was 3) reviewers to spend time to evaluate your suggestion
  2. You get a 2 rep bonus if it's accepted

Keep in mind that these users are essentially still on a learning path. If they don't get a signal now, they won't get it later.

After the suggestion, the "I"s aren't properly capitalized. Spaces are missing between sentences. And overall sentence structure is off as well in various places. The post still isn't as good as it could/should be after an edit.

So yeah, great job on what you (the editor) did fix, but not sufficient.

  • 1
    I didn't ask as the editor, I asked as a reviewer and I often see suggestions like this. That's the reason I ask. I don't care about this specific edit, but I care about the way I review and improve the community. I'm also confused about the downvotes - the question can't be that bad, if there's such a discussion with lots of different oppinions. – Fabio Poloni Jan 22 '15 at 10:22
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    That's why I said "you (the editor)". Not "you" as in you the OP of this Meta post. As for the downvots you received here, I don't see why you would be downvoted, but Meta is slightly different. Downvotes are often used in disagreement here (unfortunately) so they might just indicate "I don't agree with you that such edits are fine" ... or something along those lines. – Bart Jan 22 '15 at 10:23
  • I'm not a native english speaking person (I guess you can notice that) so I don't understand some meanings and expressions properly (like what you meant by "the editor"). I'm rarely on Meta, so thank you for this explanation. – Fabio Poloni Jan 22 '15 at 12:40
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    No worries. Glad tot help – Bart Jan 22 '15 at 12:52
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    May be useful to refer to this page in your answer stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/edit "Tiny, trivial edits are discouraged - try to make the post significantly better when you edit, correcting all problems that you observe." – JeffUK Jul 27 '17 at 22:31

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