I have seen a few posts recently on this meta site that make me wonder about "minor edits":

I have read the questions and answers from the above links, and they leave me confused.

The TLDR seems to be that "we" prefer incorrect grammar and wrong spelling, to correct grammar, and good spelling. But that doesn't make sense, and it sounds a bit cynical, so I must be missing an important point.

It seems it is better to have poor quality English on our site. I can only imagine this has something to do with being worried about the "rep-whores" that are commonly talked about on meta.

I have two concerns:

  • Is this an issue that we just don't want to give reputation points to someone who improves the quality of the site, but only by a little? So he was helpful, but we believe he should have been more helpful. In which case, then I see why we don't approve edit reviews - we just don't want people to score points.

  • If the above is somewhat close to the reason, then is it OK if I correct grammar, spelling, formatting, etc.? Given that I no longer get reputation points for improving posts - does that make it OK to try and add value in that way?

With the new high profile given to the meta site recently, I've started paying more attention to what the experts here think, and I've realise I routinely break a lot of the rules without realising it. So I'm interested in the motivation behind some of the rules I disagree with.


My impression based on this thread, and many others, is that the major costs of a smaller edit are the amount of time it takes for the review queue to be attended to, and the fact of bumping the question up on the home page.

It seems there are some high reputation users on this site who prefer titles to be useful, or who prefer syntax highlighting in the code, or who like tags to be corrected. In some cases, edits of this nature will be dismissed as "too minor" when done by users without enough reputation. However, they will be seen as positive when done by us, the trusted users.

It also appears that the highest voted answer below agrees with these sentiments - so maybe the community as a whole thinks this way (I have accepted is for that reason).

Are these reasonable conclusions to have reached?

Completely agree. If SO is intended to be a top-quality Q&A site, then we should allow people to correct grammar and spelling mistakes. We don't have to be obsessive about it, but if someone is willing to spend the time for that kind of edit, why not let them? –  Paul Draper May 3 at 19:33
@PaulDraper: Servy points out several issues with minor edits for grammar. –  J.F. Sebastian May 4 at 15:00
@J.F.Sebastian, and I point out why those issues are not significant, when weighed against the benefits. –  Paul Draper May 4 at 15:22
Sometimes a tiny typo makes a huge difference. I wish I never made tiny hypos. –  Erno de Weerd May 4 at 20:16
Even minor formatting changes can raise the "edit too minor" flag (or at least it used to). Adding the markdown for inline code is just 2 characters, and many times I've found myself at a loss as to how else I could improve the content I was editing. –  cimmanon May 4 at 23:33
I don't have enough rep to edit without approval, but I also don't like seeing tags and questions that have rampant issues with grammar or spelling - they make the site look bad and make questions harder to answer. Personally I could care less about the rep gained from such edits... perhaps an option could be added to disallow distribution of rep for minor edits? Alternatively, could there be a method of flagging a page as 'needing improvement' so qualified editors can have a look? –  Conduit May 5 at 5:11
When I "disapprove" an edit as too minor, it's almost invariably because the user is changing the intent of the question. "Too minor" becomes politer shorthand for "edit is too small, sloppy, and egocentric." I always let pure grammatical corrections through. –  Curt May 6 at 3:55
SO is not used strictly by native English speakers. Idiosyncrasies in grammar, explanations will be a constant regardless of how much we edit. The only time they need to be edited is when they create ambiguity in the question or answer. If there is no ambiguity, there is no need to change it. –  Mitch Goshorn May 6 at 13:38
Typos need to be corrected if not doing so means that the page might not get properly indexed by Google -- I also quickly fix a typo, particularly in the title, if I see it, but I don't go out of my way to hunt them down –  George Jempty May 6 at 13:52
@MitchGoshorn SO is also a tool for teaching, so why not also use it to help teach proper spelling and grammar? –  bfrohs May 6 at 14:04
I believe in minor edits because they contribute to the aggregation of marginal gains. If every edit just improves things by 1%, over time this adds up. –  Joshua Dance May 6 at 14:13
@Nate I was thinking the same thing. I would like to add: How about lowering the threshold for edits to be approved for users who forfeit those coveted two points? –  Gary May 7 at 0:15
If there are only "minor edits" to be done, then the question is hardly "poor quality", is it? If it is poor quality, then it should be possible to make major improvements to it. –  jalf May 7 at 14:25
There's also the issue of formatting changes requiring 5-6 characters added to the post. If I go through and reformat a code snippet to make it readable, I have to change something else just to put the edit through....irritating –  Marshall Tigerus May 7 at 15:06
If there is no ambiguity, there is no need to change it.- very much an opinion. Grammar is, on the whole, right or wrong. There is every reason to change bad spelling/ grammar, especially as it should help non-native speakers. –  nicodemus13 May 14 at 21:12

15 Answers 15

up vote 231 down vote accepted

Minor edits be good

  1. SO is intended to be a top-quality Q&A site, meant not just for the OP, but for posterity. Thanks to search engines, questions and answers become authoritative for the whole Internet.

  2. Spelling and grammar mistakes, even small ones, make posts more difficult to read, and negatively reflect on their quality as a hole.

  3. SO has a very large community, who read and re-read many questions multiple times a day.

  4. There is no shortage of reviewers for suggested edits. (Close Votes on the other hand...)

Together, these reasons are compelling for allowing edits, even small ones.

Rejection of @Servy's reasons (which are common objections)

  1. "It consumes a lot of reviewer time." First, the edit queue is short or non-existant. Second, if you wanted, "minor edits" (using our current criteria) could require only one reviewer. They are easy to understand, easy to check, and almost any reviewer can determine their correctness.

  2. "It locks the post from editing until the post is reviewed, inhibiting the ability of other users to make more substantial edits." True, though I have never encountered this with any edit. Probably because the edit queue most often hovers between five and zero.

  3. "It draws reviewer time away from other suggested edits, causing them to lock up the posts for longer, and prevent other more substantial edits from being applied sooner." This seems like a repetition of #1 and #2, smashed together.

  4. "It bumps the post on the front page, drawing attention to it and consuming the time of readers without much benefit." I'm not sure what "without much benefit" means. If you want to look at new questions (not questions that have been edited recently), look at Unanswered newest.

Addtionally, there seems to be a common logical fallacy that someone who can't correct a single spelling mistake turns to other, more significant edits. I don't think this happens: "Oh, I can't edit the typo in this question I'm reading...I should interrupt what I'm doing and instead go search SO for a worse question."


I agree, any edit which leaves the post in a superior state should be welcomed. The standard of quality must be high to encourage everyone to contribute their best. Worth noting that we very much do not have a shortage of suggested edit reviewers. –  Brad Koch May 4 at 17:15
No way - a trivially superior state is not excuse for the time wasted in the review queue, the reputation-leaching habits encouraged, and most especially the unwarranted attention of bumping often pointless questions to the top of the page. –  Chris Stratton May 4 at 18:33
You are correct to point out the logical fallacy. If I see a minor error on SE, I will usually just leave it. If I see a minor error on Wikipedia and I have time, I'll often fix it. ;-) –  James Haigh May 4 at 23:18
@Chris Stratton: Unnecessary bumping and accidental rep-farming can be trivially avoided using a ‘minor edit’ checkbox that prevents the edit from bumping and discredits the +2 rep. As Paul Draper points out, minor edits take less time per review to process, and reviewer time of minor edits could be further reduced by requiring fewer reviews per minor edit. Reviewer time is the only real issue here, but this has to be weighed up against the editor time that is being pushed away from the network. –  James Haigh May 4 at 23:36
@JamesHaigh, true, though I feel the only important part here is the reviewer time. Editor time is IMO not as "transferrable". –  Paul Draper May 4 at 23:40
I've never seen the "minor edit" checkbox and will make a point to look for it, however I expect that a lot of these near pointless edits are coming from those who see that, rather than meaningful contribution of solutions, as their path towards gaining reputation and so would be unwilling to use it. Perhaps approval-required edits should only gain points if a majority of the approving reviewers vote that they should. –  Chris Stratton May 4 at 23:40
I disagree with #1. For a computer to automatically determine, reliably, which edits are minor is very, very difficult. Number of characters changed/deleted/inserted is a very poor metric for significance of changes. And trusting the low-reputation user to correctly flag minor edits isn't much better. –  Ben Voigt May 4 at 23:41
@BenVoigt, I 100% agree, and yet we have such a "very poor metric" right now used for disallowing edits. I would actually like to get rid of that metric altogether. –  Paul Draper May 4 at 23:45
Ahh, maybe giving the "edit is minor" checkbox to the reviewers instead of the editor would be better. That's rather like Kate's method using "improve, uncheck suggestion was useful", but saves some steps and can be considered in attribution of the edit. –  Ben Voigt May 4 at 23:50
@Chris Stratton: Not “the”, “a” – a ‘minor edit’ checkbox like that of Wikipedia that doesn't currently exist on this site but should. Those who would be unwilling to use it would face more reviewers, but the first reviewer could mark it as minor and this would do two things: reduce the number of further needed reviewers; and remove the incentive for deliberately not flagging the minor edit as minor. –  James Haigh May 5 at 0:08
@Ben Voigt: Just seen your comment. What do you think to my suggestion which first gives the option to the suggester, but the reviewer can also check the checkbox, and resultantly reduce the number of reviewers needed as if the suggester had checked it correctly in the the first place? –  James Haigh May 5 at 0:24
@JamesHaigh: That seems good. Maybe also a slight penalty to the editor if they fail to use that box when they should have. I'm thinking not directly negative rep, but count against their rep-from-edit cap for the day. That way it will only affect lazy rep-farmers who are betting on roboreviewers to boost them. –  Ben Voigt May 5 at 0:47
@Ben Voigt: A slight penalty did cross my mind at first, but I didn't want to punish the occasional accident, then I realised that the penalty isn't necessary to make sure that minor edits are flagged without wasting reviewer time because minor edits still need at least one reviewer and the first reviewer could correct the flag. Your suggestion does make sense though because it targets those editors who are more likely to be deliberately incorrectly flagging edits at high volume to rep-farm, rather than the new user who suggested a correct minor edit but forgot to tick the box. –  James Haigh May 5 at 1:09
This "minor edit" checkbox idea is sounding better and better to me the more I think about it... –  Richard Le Mesurier May 5 at 6:03
@MatthieuM. I think we can ENTIRELY discount the benefit of that "soft" penalty. I don't think you'll disagree with me if I say that less than 10% of askers who require a minor edit will notice if their question gets bumped or not. And regardless I don't consider the bumping an issue either way -- there are PLENTY of ways to filter your search for new questions. –  Adam Smith May 7 at 19:47

Personally, I only use the 'too minor' rejection reason as a euphemism for "I'm not actually convinced that this is an improvement" or "Some of your changes make this post better, some make it worse, and I don't care enough to unpick them because none of them matters very much." Since fairly early in my reviewing days, I've never rejected a genuinely good but minor edit for being too minor.

I've never understood what the purpose of doing so is (or even what edits qualify; there's a total lack of discussion, as far as I've been able to discover, on where the threshold is), and what other reviewers do is totally inconsistent. I've seen major rewrites of broken English into something comprehensible, or code formatting changes needed to make the post remotely readable, both rejected as 'too minor', and had to go and reimplement these changes myself because they were vital if the post was to be salvaged into something useful to anybody. I've also seen suggestions that did nothing but change a word for a synonym accepted. If the plan is to impose a standard threshold of minor-ness at which things get rejected, then on the whole we're just utterly failing.

Additionally, while I realise that minor edits causing post-bumping is a genuine issue, I'm utterly taken aback by the assertion from Servy and Kate Gregory that rejecting minor edits is supposed to save reviewers time. Frankly, I think it does precisely the opposite. I assumed that the rejection of minor edits was just supposed to ensure that the ease of gaining rep via minor edits didn't end up disincentivizing people from making more substantial edits.

Reviewing a substantial edit - that heavily rewrites a piece of prose, or makes a non-trivial code change - usually takes me at least a minute or two, and requires me to read and understand the entire post being edited. For edits complicated enough that I have to do research to determine the edit's correctness, it's roughly as much of an investment of effort as making the change myself would be. On the other hand, reviewing a bunch of typo fixes can literally be done in 5 to 10 seconds, and - unlike more serious edits - the time cost doesn't scale with the length or complexity of the post being edited.

The only thing that used to cost me time when reviewing minor edits - before I gave up on rejecting them - was trying to figure out whether they were 'too minor' or not. As soon as I have to answer that, suddenly I need to think. Does this grammar fix significantly affect readability? Was this typo going to leave people unsure about what was meant? Or are these changes frivolous? I once again need to understand some context, and besides passing judgement on whether the edit is good I've got this whole extra layer of judgement I'm supposed to make - with pretty much zero guidance on where the thresholds are - on whether it's done enough good, or just a little bit of good. That's a much more demanding call than just going "yep, the grammar was wrong and now it's right. Accept."

And for what? For starters, it seems to me that Kate Gregory and others who reject these edits will never succeed at reducing them by even half of what they are today, even if everybody tries to support them in it. These suggested edits come from low-rep (i.e. relatively new) users, and therefore churn is built into the system - there will always be new new users to replace the old new users, and unlike closed questions, rejected suggestions are pretty much invisible to anybody except the suggester and reviewers, so your efforts won't set an example to the next generation. You can't build long-lasting behaviour changes with suggested edit reviews - you can at most hope to influence the user who made the suggestion, and often not even them.

And if the rejecters did succeed at making such a drastic reduction? Like Kate, I can only speak for myself, but I'm pretty certain that even if I got the experience to be much quicker at it than I am today, seriously weighing up whether something was 'too minor' would still take several times as long as determining the correctness of a handful of spelling or grammar changes does. At least in my case, you'd need to reduce the number of minor edits by an implausibly large factor before the time it would take me to review them as you'd like me to would be less than the time it takes to just check they're correct and click them through. Perhaps others have had a drastically different experience to me, but early on when I was reviewing figuring out whether edits - perfectly valid, correct edits that made posts better - should be rejected as 'too minor' or not was sucking up a large proportion of my reviewing time, and was the most un-fun part of the entire process. Accepting them wastes drastically less of my time and doesn't cause me the same level of stress and doubt.

As a final aside, I find bad English in posts distracting, even if there are only a few instances of it and it's possible to piece together the meaning without much effort. As such, I don't find edits that fix it close-to-worthless as others here seem to.

Apart from the word 'only', I agree with the first paragraph; I sometimes use 'too minor' to mean 'subjective; not good enough to be accepted unconditionally; not bad enough to be rejected as invalid'. –  Jonathan Leffler May 4 at 20:00
It's not the edits being rejected that save reviewer time, it's the disincentive that rejection sets for submitting similar minimal changes to the review queue in the future, that saves reviewer time. –  Ben Voigt May 4 at 23:43
I also "find bad English in posts distracting" and slower to read and get through. Correct English (US or UK) is just easier to get into my head. That's the root of my question, and why I too find the official reasons hard to reconcile. –  Richard Le Mesurier May 5 at 5:58
@BenVoigt I understand that that is Servy and Kate's intent. My objection is that approving correct but minor edits without regard to how minor they are takes so little time, and having to think about whether they're "minor" takes so much, and the potential proportion of minor edits that we can eliminate by changing the incentives is so small and impermanent, that I don't think it's plausible for rejecting minor edits to save time on net. –  Mark Amery May 5 at 8:20
@MarkAmery I just overhauled a poorly constructed answer, today, that was "rejected" - the answer remains poorly written and nearly incomprehensible. It is certainly frustrating when that happens. Amen to your post. –  Thomas May 7 at 21:32
@Thomas hmm, this suggestion looks like the only one that you could be describing? The reviewers may simply have thought that the original was more clear than your revised version. I've never touched C++ and am not very familiar with its import mechanism, so there may be subtleties that are going over my head that justify the change, but to my naive eyes the original version looks easier to understand. I'm a native English speaker, but just parsing that many-claused sentence you've crafted made my brow furrow in concentration a little. –  Mark Amery May 7 at 21:53
@MarkAmery hmmm... No, that one I wasn't to concerned about (forgot I even made the edit). That might mean the other one I posted failed to post - what a relief! –  Thomas May 7 at 22:33
A couple of years ago, the SO suggested edit review queue was severely understaffed; saving reviewers' time was important. This has changed (probably by moving the rep threshold for the review queue from 10k down to 2k), and I now use “too minor” pretty much in the same way as you. –  Gilles Jun 12 at 17:28

Is this an issue that we just don't want to give rep to someone who improves the quality of the site, but only by a little?

Not really. Maybe just a touch, but it's pretty far down on the list of problems with too minor edits. Here are some much more important issues:

  1. It consumes a lot of reviewer time. Time that could be better spent doing other things, like fixing the spelling grammar of other posts. (Imagine how many of these minor edits could be done in the time the 3-5 reviewers spend reviewing that edit.)




The biggest problem with users getting rep with very minor edits is that it encourages them to make more of them, thus causing the above problems to happen over and over. When the users don't get their edits approved, they either learn not to make these edits, thus not causing those problems, or they get edit banned, thus being unable to cause those problems.

If the above is somewhat close to the reason, then is it OK if I correct grammar, spelling, formatting etc? Given that I no longer get rep for improving posts - does that make it OK to try and add value in that way?

It reduces the harm. 1, 2, and 3 don't apply. #4 does, but that's still pretty significantly reduced the net harm of the minor edits. So if you want to fix a few small things when you come across them naturally, that's generally fine, but when you go around actively searching for, say, a single common typo to fix, then you flood the homepage, and that gets disruptive. In short, fix it when you see it, don't go looking for it.

seems to be that "we" prefer incorrect grammar and wrong spelling, to correct grammar, and good spelling. But that doesn't make sense, it sounds a bit cynical, so I must be missing an important point.

You're right, it doesn't make sense, and that's not what's going on here. We don't like incorrect grammar and wrong spelling, but the problems fixed by those minor edits aren't as substantial as the problems caused by the person fixing it. When the medicine hurts more than the disease, you don't take it. That doesn't mean that it's good to be sick.

Servy, I'm glad we agree today after disagreeing yesterday. I'm not breaking "our" guidelines by doing what I think improves the site - its more linked to the reviewing cycle, and teaching the newer guys how the game works. –  Richard Le Mesurier May 2 at 18:40
@Servy: pp. 1-3 do not exist if a user have enough rep to edit. p.4 could be dealt programmatically -- if it is hard to detect minor edits automatically then add a check box: [x] - minor edit (no bump to front page). –  J.F. Sebastian May 4 at 14:57
-1. Your point 3 kind of doesn't matter since the suggested edit queue never gets long. Point 2 only really applies to recently posted questions, and could be fixed by just not allowing suggestions until an hour after a post is created. Point 1 I also disagree with; small grammar and formatting changes can be reviewed pretty much at a glance, without even needing to read the entire post, whereas more substantial changes require many minutes to review properly and require that the reviewer understand the post. The reviewer/editor effort ratio is better for minor edits, not worse. –  Mark Amery May 4 at 17:20
One also could provide the minor edit checkbox only to users with enough reputation (basically creating a "minor edit" priviledge). To avoid someone misusing it, one could say that a certain proportion of minor edits still get bumped (say, about 5% of them), and use of that feature is limited to a certain number of minor edits per day. Also, there could be separate lists of minor edits available to moderators (or even to everyone who can flag posts), so that explicit checking for abusive minor edits could be done. without affecting the front page. –  celtschk May 4 at 20:29
@J.F.Sebastian I specifically said, in my answer, that 1-3 don't apply to users with editing privileges, which is why it's not nearly as problematic for such users to make minor edits. An option for suggesting "minor edits" has been made many times before. It has always been rejected. –  Servy May 5 at 14:07
@celtschk If you're going to draw attention to minor edits, and require people to be spending a bunch of time checking them for abuse, then your proposed system isn't succeeding in its attempt to avoid consuming the time of others. Either that time is spent checking the edits, and thus not spent on other activities, or it's not, and there is the potential for abuse. You don't get both. –  Servy May 5 at 14:10
@Servy: With a separate list, everyone could decide for himself whether he wants to take time checking minor edits (and unlike review, there would be no queue to work up, but just a list). I'd expect actual abuse to be negligible anyway; but the extra list should satisfy also the paranoid. Also the assumption that the time spent on checking minor edits would otherwise have been spent on other activities on the network is just a guess. –  celtschk May 5 at 19:42
@celtschk What makes you think the abuse would be lower? The suggested edits queue already sees a fair bit of abuse. If you provide ways of making it easier for a suggested edit to get through (less reviewers, reviewers who aren't paying as much attention, reviewers who aren't as interested in the editing guidelines, etc.) they'll absolutely shove it through that queue. You'll see spam/vandalism going through that queue, regular edits by people who just want less reviewers for a greater shot at approval, people who just don't know the difference between the two options, etc. –  Servy May 5 at 19:47
@Servy: And how many of those are from high reputation members? (Ah, I notice now that you speak about "suggested edits". Those who only can suggest edits certainly would not have the necessary reputation to mark changes as minor.) –  celtschk May 5 at 19:50
@celtschk High rep users don't suggest edits at all. Their edits do not need to be reviewed. This is why I stated, in my answer, that it's not nearly as problematic for higher reputation users to be making minor edits. It can be a problem in a few situations (mass re-tagging, for example, can become disruptive) but it largely is not, when editing naturally. –  Servy May 5 at 19:55
@Servy: I didn't say they suggest edits. The problem which was noted for high-rep users was that it bumps the question. A minor-edit checkbox could avoid that. –  celtschk May 5 at 19:56
@celtschk If you add that then yes, you'll see abuse. You'll find spammers given the motivation to get enough reputation to edit posts without anyone being notified, there are cases (granted, somewhat rare, but still) in which people get mad at each other and vandalize each others' posts, there are people that make edits that they think are minor but are in fact wrong (this is particularly relevant with respect to code; fixing a misspelled word has significant consequences, meriting the attention to the edit, when it's editing code) etc. You'll also see more abuse if you remove these checks. –  Servy May 5 at 19:59
@Servy: Somehow in every single comment you ignore some part of my suggestion. But I've now decided to not waste my time further with arguing about it. –  celtschk May 5 at 20:06
@RetoKoradi If you can make a case for why a particular edit will have a significant impact, then by all means. In such a case the edit may well not have been too minor (although on a related note, Google is actually smart enough to handle typos in many cases; it's not just doing straight textual contains searches). Whether a post is minor or not is not about how many characters it edits, it's about how much value is added from the edit. Capitalizing an uncapitalized word in some contexts is very minor; when it changes a code block from an error to working code, it's not. Context matters. –  Servy May 8 at 17:57
I'm wondering how many minor edits would be approved in the amount of time spent on this meta answer. –  tloveless May 12 at 23:07

I ran into a problem where the 6 character limit stopped me from making a code error change. The OP had something like uid in parts of his code, but id in another. I reread it for 5 minutes until I realized he meant uid The post was a year old so there wasn't a point of making a comment, but I just wanted to add that u in there - though I didn't want to add fluff in order to make that change. I wound up doing nothing because it wouldn't let me add one character (however important that was to the question).

I totally agree. Similar issue is that white chars are not considered as change. So you may spend ten minutes fixing formatting and when you press Save - you see error, that your edit is too short! Very frustrating. –  Leos Literak May 6 at 14:15
This is the real big issue, I think. Typos in code, even when it's only 1 character, are extremely meaningful, and can end up wasting a lot of time because readers don't understand the question properly, and answers might address this incorrectly. Requiring additional characters just to fix one fatal typo is unnecessary and harmful. –  mcv May 7 at 8:30
For this reason alone, this limitation should have never been implemented. I had an instance where someone was discussing a variable and typed the wrong one which totally confused everything, but I ended up just leaving it because it wouldn't allow me to make the fix. –  aepryus May 7 at 12:35
add a comment to the code as well? The limit is sensible, as it prevents people hitting edit, adding a space, or changing a comma for a semi-colon in text, then getting credit for editing something. –  jwenting May 7 at 13:03
I may have found a way around this. I just edited someone's code for formatting. I bet if you unformat/reformat it would register as more than 6 characters. –  Gisto May 8 at 15:58

I am just throwing this out there for a more 'visual' reference.

Stack Overflow StackOverflow Edit Queue

Super User SuperUser Edit Queue

Programmers Programmers Edit Queue

Server Fault ServerFault Edit Queue

The argument that it's taking up reviewers' time is completely ridiculous.

Seems a lot of us lower rep users are taking this argument - I think this is a great graphic to back it up. –  Richard Le Mesurier May 13 at 8:21
@RichardLeMesurier A couple of years ago, the SO suggested edit review queue was severely understaffed; saving reviewers' time was important. This has changed (probably by moving the rep threshold for the review queue from 10k down to 2k). This argument isn't intrinsically ridiculous, but it is no longer applicable. (This argument is too minor; opposition should be substantive objections addressing multiple issues in the suggestion.) –  Gilles Jun 12 at 17:29

The problem is when only these minor fixes are made but there are other changes to be made. "Too minor" doesn't necessarily mean that the thing fixed was minor but that the change was minor in comparison to what could have been done.

So the answer to your first question


Yes, that's part of it, we want people to fix as much as possible in the post and not just make a single (unlikely problematic) change when there was much more that could have been fixed.

For your second question


They still should improve the post quite a bit since edits can bump the question. We don't want questions getting bumped ahead of others just for capitalizing a letter or two or adding a comma somewhere (unless those changes do greatly impact the meaning of the post to make it more clear)


Saying things like "apologies for the downvoting I'll likely get" usually invites downvotes. Just post your question, thought, etc... and let the SE universe do its thing.

"Too minor" doesn't necessarily mean that the thing fixed was minor but that the change was minor in comparison to what could have been done. Actually, it does. Read the rejection text: "suggested edits should be substantive improvements addressing multiple issues in the post." It doesn't say that they are fixing everything, but rather that they are substantial. Many people choose to accept complete, but minor, edits anyway. This is understandable, but also very confusing for editors/reviewers due to the inconsistency. –  Servy May 2 at 18:43
@Servy I will admit that I've been confused on that for awhile myself. But I read a post saying basically what I put so I changed my thinking. For example, if a relevant tag were changed, changing a tag is minor but it has an impact on the post, so it should be approved assuming they didn't find anything else to change. Is that correct? Now, if they capitalized one letter, even if nothing else was wrong, that would be too minor. –  codeMagic May 2 at 18:48
Suggesting an edit has costs. I discuss them in my answer. If the benefit of the edit is greater than those costs, it's worth approving it. When it's not, it isn't. Sometimes adding an important tag, such as a language tag, to a post, can greatly improve it. Sometime adding just four spaces, so that a code block is formatted as code, greatly improves the readability of a post. Sometimes fixing a single capitalization error causes a code sample to compile instead of error. Of course, all of those actions can be done in a context to not be very helpful at all. –  Servy May 2 at 18:51
@Servy I think your answer is pretty close to perfect, but I think codeMagic brings up an important point that is certainly part of the issue for me. Formatting a code block is an edit that I'll approve if the post otherwise looks great, but if the post is rife with spelling and grammatical errors, I'll reject it as too minor. The reasoning is similar to your own: don't waste our time with an edit that fixes only one of several obvious things that need fixing -- but fixing the one and only thing that needs fixing is generally worth doing unless it is very minor. –  Darshan-Josiah Barber May 3 at 19:48
I had multiple times the case where there was exactly one character wrong and made the "read experience" annoying. The editor tells you to change "something else" - and then you either WTF+Cancel the action, or you start to edit "something else" only to reach the limit to make it a valid edit. Both ways seem smelly to me. –  JensG May 4 at 16:30
@Servy: I agree that fixing capitalization in code isn't a minor edit. It should be rejected for an entirely different reason -- it dramatically changes the meaning. That's not something that editors are supposed to do. They should leave a comment instead. –  Ben Voigt May 4 at 23:39
@BenVoigt Making such a change is still maintaining the intentions of the post's author. Code (in an answer, not in a question) is not sacrosanct and prohibited from being ever touched. If the authors intentions are clear, editing the post to say what they meant is entirely fine. Fixing a simple typo, or capitalization error, even in code, is entirely appropriate. Changing the logic of the code, when the authors intentions are opposed to the edit, is the problem. This is a well established editing guideline. –  Servy May 5 at 14:05
This is the reason that small edits are discouraged, and hasn't gotten enough emphasis in this discussion. A lot of new users suggest a flood of small edits to get their +2 without actually doing very much to improve the site, often leaving huge errors in place. The point of having those edits reviewed is to teach new users how to edit posts in a way that actually improves the site in a substantive way. –  senderle May 7 at 14:47
This is the fallacious argument given by @JeffAtwood. It is fallacious because it assumes that a post which has a minor (by number of chars) but significant (in meaning) typo also has several other things wrong with it which need fixing. Unfortunately the truth about this issue is that Jeff wedded himself to an impossible position a long time ago, and has made his mind up that it is inadmissible ever to admit that he was wrong about this. –  jwg May 14 at 15:27

As a new user, I enjoy the freedom to suggest "minor" edits. Why? Because at this juncture, I am seen as exactly that: a know-nothing, new user not to be taken seriously (despite my experience programming which is not reflected via Stack Overflow in any concrete way). Also, I full-heartedly agree that garbage grammar and syntax makes the site less reputable (as does bad code syntax) and for this reason minor edits are to lauded as ensuring Stack Overflow remains a top-quality, reliable source.

Perhaps this is the advantage of being relatively new: we are able and willing to go through an cleanup the trash, flag things, and wager an answer or comment here and there. And who hasn't read an academic journal, recently? Minor edits are what make the academic world go round. In the good ol' days of good writing, nothing was published unless walking through a gauntlet of stark criteria, also known as accountable peer review.

I think it is indeed silly that a person can reject revisions because they are believed to be too minor.

New users aren't necessarily assumed to know nothing. If you know something, the best way to show that is to spend time writing solid answers or posing thoughtful questions. Really good answers get voted up for years and will get you much more reputation much faster than spending time on piddly little 2 point edits. Also, as a new user you're not really free to make minor edits, you're only welcome to suggest edits that someone else has to approve. –  Caleb May 7 at 14:05
@Caleb I know. I was just being dramatic for the sake of drama. However, your point is well made. –  Thomas May 7 at 15:28

I appeal to keep edits as minimal as possible.

I mean, if you edit a post just to fix a typo mistake, DO NOT be tempted to "improve language style". It can sometimes obscure the intention of the original post and after all it is not a poetry site.

Good point - that's what I say when making submissions to any repo I control, so why not here too. Keep the commit changes to the point, makes the diff easier. –  Richard Le Mesurier May 13 at 8:20

It is not so black and white as that. You think the only choices are that a typo remains uncorrected, or that a user who can only suggest edits corrects the typo. This is a false dichotomy, which leads you to the obviously false conclusion that we prefer incorrect grammar and wrong spelling.

I (I can't speak for others) prefer silly typos like "teh" and minor grammar issues that any native speaker can correct to spending the time of edit-reviewers reviewing edits that fix only those. This has nothing to do with whether those mistakes should go uncorrected or a suggester should earn rep for something small.

If there is plenty to fix, fix it all. If there is just one tiny typo, your best bet is to ignore it and let a higher-rep user fix it later. If you think the typo is interfering with understanding (not/now is a classic example) leave a comment.

So rejecting the review, and hoping another high rep user like you or I will come and fix it later - how does that save time? Is this another case of trying to cure the whole population of new guys by rejecting individual attempts? –  Richard Le Mesurier May 2 at 18:37
Don't reject. Hit improve and uncheck "suggested edit was helpful." Fix anything else you see that needs fixing. Reject can't serve its intended purpose in an ecosystem of roboreviewers. And yes, as Servy explains getting people to stop suggesting these teeny edits (by withholding the reward) is a long game, but the only game in town really. –  Kate Gregory May 2 at 18:39
Thx Kate, I missed that checkbox last time I took the time for reviews - will be sure to use it next time round. –  Richard Le Mesurier May 2 at 18:44
@KateGregory I'm pretty sure they did make the change to the edit ban system to not include edits rejected through improving though, so while you do reject that edit, you don't push the user towards an edit ban. (I'm not positive about this though; I might just be thinking about cases involving rejections due to conflicted edits.) –  Servy May 2 at 18:48
@Servy, given the choice between "I am sure you will not get your dopamine" and "you will probably get your dopamine but the chances of an edit ban have increased fractionally" I will go with the first. –  Kate Gregory May 2 at 18:50
@KateGregory Yeah, just mentioning it. If you think that an edit is so bad that it's likely to be rejected, even with all of the robo reviewers, I'll risk it though. Sometimes you can also tell, by looking at your recent history, whether there are more robo or quality reviewers online at that particular moment. Judgement calls. –  Servy May 2 at 18:53
I can't get behind this approach. Your proposed solution to typo-correcting edits (that I've found can be seen to be correct or not in about 5 seconds, unlike more meaningful edits that can take me many minutes) 'wasting' the time of people with edit privileges is to either 1) expect a reviewer to take the time to copy-edit in detail a post he otherwise wouldn't care about, or 2) expect somebody to spend the time to redo the suggester's work later. How does that possibly reduce wasted effort? I'm pretty sure I can review 5 typo changes in less time than it takes for me to copy-edit one post. –  Mark Amery May 4 at 17:30
@MarkAmery if you're not prepared to copy edit in detail then don't do it. Searching for one common mistake and fixing only that in hundreds of posts, leaving other mistakes untouched, is not helping anyone. I don't care how quickly you can do it. If you're going to use up reviewer time, prevent others from suggesting edits, bump the post to the first page, etc then do all that for a reason, not just to change teh to the. While it may seem wasteful to reject an individual edit that has already been done, too minor are supposed to be rejected and it should reduce bad suggestions in future. –  Kate Gregory May 4 at 17:35
I suppose we need some minor edits in the honeypot system. That might knock down roboreviewers in a big hurry. –  Ben Voigt May 4 at 23:46
@BenVoigt see meta.stackexchange.com/questions/168374/… –  Kate Gregory May 5 at 0:14
@BenVoigt people who thoughtfully disagree with you on what reasons justify rejecting an edit do not warrant the label 'roboreviewers'. I simply take the view that reviewers shouldn't have to spend time weighing up whether to throw away other people's valid and useful work for the sake of establishing a system of incentives that I: 1) don't think can actually be created and 2) am not sure should exist anyway. I resent being labelled as some kind of unscrupulous badge-whore for taking this view. –  Mark Amery May 7 at 22:17
@MarkAmery: I'm not using the word for people who thoughtfully anything. People who dispose of 30 items in the suggested edit queues in 10 seconds are not being thoughtful. Audits for too minor edits will catch both roboreviewers, and people who thoughtfully made a decision against the actual rules of the site, decided on meta by consensus. If you disagree with having a "too minor" rejection reason, argue that on meta. But don't ignore the rules. –  Ben Voigt May 7 at 22:19
@BenVoigt Tell me if I'm being uncharitable, but it seems to me that the intent of your proposal of using minor edits as audits which to catch those who disagree with you; otherwise you're just picking a class of audits that guarantees you the worst ratio of roboreviewers caught to innocents caught in the crossfire. Re: going 'against' the rules decided by 'consensus'; consensus seems, from the votes here, to be against you, and as I said in my answer I have never been able to find any rules on what edits should be rejected as minor. I would welcome links to some. –  Mark Amery May 7 at 22:31
@Mark: If you think this represents a change in consensus, then submit a feature-request for removal of the "edit is too minor" rejection reason. Questions tagged discussion are non-binding. –  Ben Voigt May 7 at 22:33

To me, the main downside of approving a minor edit is that it has side effects like bumping edited questions. That's what needs to be balanced against the benefits of the edit.

If an entire post is poorly written and the editor fixes the grammar and spelling throughout the post, I will typically vote to approve. If the editor only fixes one word, I will typically vote against the edit as "too minor".

One thing I wish for is a lighter pink for the background of removed text, so I could more easily read the original and compare it to the edited version of the post. The current colors seem to me to exaggerate the differences between the two in a way that significantly adds to my reviewing time.

one word can be a major edit, if it's the right word :) –  jwenting May 7 at 13:04

I think minor edits are frowned upon only if they are performed using suggested edits. Reasons were already given: wasting time of reviewers, locking posts, rep whoring etc.

However, when you gain enough reputation to edit posts without approval, I don't see anything wrong about fixing misspellings and other minor issues.

Typos don't look nice, but they don't make questions or answers any less useful. It's much better to spend energy elsewhere. For example, on answering questions or reviewing.

Overall, the rule is simple: if you feel like wasting your time, make sure to waste only your time. In that case, it means earning some rep before starting a futile war against typos.

This answer is rather opinion-based to me. Typos (especially in code, as has been pointed out)/ grammar mistakes, confusing style are all useful. Unfortunately, the design of the system, requiring review, means that I can't avoid 'wasting' someone else's time. How can I follow a rule to 'waste' only my own time, when someone must review it? –  nicodemus13 May 14 at 21:22

Could the Too minor edit be changed to Did not add any quality to post.?

Really, what we are trying to avoid is pointless edits but as long as they are an improvement then they are adding quality to the post and the site.


In my opinion, one reason to have "too minor" as a reason for disapproving an edit is quality control. Edits, like posts, have quality of their own. The "too minor" reason says that your edit has to be above a certain level to be admitted.

Now, for example, in an edit I just came across, someone just changed "openlayers" to "OpenLayers" because Hungarian style is more to his/her liking; or worse, in other cases, people just put a block of error message you post into a code block so that a line is 10 pages wide, what should we do?

Is the edit "Invalid", "Radical Change", "Vandalism" or "Copied Content"?

Obviously, none of the above. There is no proper way to say, that the edit is just "too minor". There is no quality control now except for the extreme cases, unless you are willing to abuse the system and mark those edits as "Invalid" or such. Reviewers are probably prone to choose the lesser of the two evils, and accept "too minor" edits.

One consequence, of course, is to discourage people from making true edits.

Maybe, like Wikipedia, SO should have an checkbox that says "this is a minor edit" on the edit page? This way, minor edits do not contribute as much to rep and the reviewer can anticipate that it's minor change.



Here's what Jeff Atwood stated back in '09:

Avoid making isolated, trivial edits, as they are the source of much friction

Original post:

As I remember, the original reasons why minor edits were discouraged (feel free to dig through the archives of the SO blog if you want to be sure. I'm just going by my memory) was nothing to do with reviewer time (back then, the reviewer mechanism didn't exist). It was simply that it can come across as harsh, disrespectful and unwelcoming to (new) users. It can seem very intrusive, editing something someone else wrote without their permission, and without first informing them of what you're doing and why.

Having others sneak in and edit what you wrote makes it look like your question wasn't good enough, and might push people towards not asking questions again in the future.

If I wrote something on SO, I am glad to see others substantially improve it, but it is still my question or answer, but it does seem disrespectful if others start ticking off typos or bad grammar in it for no other reason than because they can and have nothing better to do.

It's like if you go to a restaurant and pull out a marker to correct a typo on their menu. No one asked you to do that, and while yes, they should get it fixed for their own sake, it just seems petty and disrespectful to unilaterally correct it.

SO has already slid heavily towards favoring and encouraging reviewers and editors, at the cost of making it a less welcoming place for people writing actual content. The "don't make minor, trivial edits" rule was a simple guideline to not alienate users by having what they wrote changed under their feet.

Your menu analogy is not right. Menus are not created with the expectation of being edited, whereas SO questions are. I don't see why typos should remain simply to avoid offending the OP with edits. –  Duncan May 7 at 14:59
@Duncan not all SO users create their questions with the expectation of being edited either. Compared to forums, mailing lists, newsgroups and whatever else people may come from, others editing your content is not always an expectation. And the reason for avoiding offending the OP is very simple: You want him to stay on the site. I'm sorry that you don't like it, but it's a simple truth. (Some) people are turned off by others rushing to edit and change what they wrote. Is that a price worth paying for something trivial like changing a "teh" to "the"? –  jalf May 7 at 15:03
Here's a blog post by Jeff Atwood explaining why trivial edits should generally be avoided. Here is an example of a user feeling alienated by it. Note also that while googling for this, literally half the search results were people complaining about how SO sucks these days –  jalf May 7 at 15:14
We have a help page dedicated to this topic. One of the first few sentences is "If you are not comfortable with the idea of your contributions being collaboratively edited by other trusted users, this may not be the site for you.". TBH, I'm not overly bothered about retaining every user who walks through the door. If they are particularly offended by well-intentioned edits that improve the quality of the site, perhaps this isn't the site for them. –  Duncan May 7 at 15:18
I suppose our debate here hinges on just how trivial we are talking about. I don't welcome a one-word change from "its" to "it's". But I'm happy to correct several typos and grammatical errors in a post. –  Duncan May 7 at 15:19
@Duncan: "edited by other trusted users" is explicitly NOT the topic of the disagreement. Trusted users don't go through the suggested edits queue. –  Ben Voigt May 7 at 22:23
@Duncan why don't you welcome a one-word change? You seemed to argue before that there was nothing wrong with such trivial edits, that people should expect and welcome and appreciate them. Personally I agree with you: fixing a single typo just for the sake of fixing a typo doesn't really improve the site (and as I said, it may turn users away, which are, like it or not, the lifeblood of SO). Fixing several typos and errors to actually make the post clearer and more readable, that's different, and not what I would call "too minor". It just doesn't seem like what you were arguing before –  jalf May 8 at 0:16
Anyway, I pointed to the original rationale behind the recommendation to avoid making "too minor" edits. The help page you mentioned talks about editing in general, not about minor nitpicks and people fixing individual typos. Saying "you should expect trusted users to collaboratively edit and improve your posts" does not automatically imply "you should expect anyone on the site to fix your every typo or grammar error". –  jalf May 8 at 0:18
@BenVoigt I believe that phrase means that trusted users are involved in every edit, whether directly or by approving edits of others. –  Duncan May 8 at 7:05
@jalf Perhaps we are closer to being in agreement than I originally thought. I thought your original answer was suggesting that most typo/grammar corrections are unwelcome. But it sounds now like neither of us want to see one or two minor corrections in a post, but both would welcome a general tidy up of misspellings and grammatical errors. –  Duncan May 8 at 7:08

I wrote this post yesterday on a similar issue to do with editing and the peer-review process. While I tend to agree that edits for grammar and language are as important to SO as edits on content, it might be useful to distinguish between the types of edits being made. Flags need to be qualified with a reason and why not have something similar for edits? Differentiation could be made on the following:

  1. Technical content, clarification, logic
  2. Correction of typos in code and examples, code block fixing
  3. Language, grammar, text flow
  4. Minor typographical corrections, punctuation, etc.

Since most users, and presumably even posters, would not care about the latter three types of edits (even though they benefit from them), I would suggest to have these made "silently", e.g. no mention of them under the OP, but still visible in the revision history. Only the first type of edits would be explicitly mentioned with the OP because they may change the meaning of the OP or the comprehensibility for readers.

The editor self-assigns the type of edits made. Rep can be differentiated based on type, i.e. +10 for type 1, +2 for types 2 and 3 and +0 for type 4. Toss in the appropriate badges for added editor self-esteem. Have a moderator check on editors with unusually high edits of type 1 or limit editing rep to x rep/day, just to keep the repwhores at a distance. Type 1 typically requires more analysis and work than the other types and it is a nice encouragement to contribute to what SO is all about: high-quality Q&A.


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