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I'm fairly sure I've seen something before, but my search-fu appears to be lacking this morning... I love SO and actively pursue some tags, and when nothing's active there, I tend to go through the review queues etc..., but then I still get stuck by seeing an edit to a question, which I believe I can make better and more easily answerable. However, sometimes a suggested edit (which I can't approve/reject/improve) is lingering and if no-one else comes along to approve/reject/improve etc... the post stays in "limbo"...

In short, it's just frustrating to see a proposed edit (mixes of ones I would approve, reject or improve) and just not be able to act...

So, do I leave a couple of my "allowance" spare, just so I can vote/improve? But then, it seems a waste that there's 2/3 other posts that I could be going over to try to improve elsewhere...

Any suggestions on this? How do others approach this limit?

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Wait until tomorrow? –  dmckee Dec 2 '12 at 5:29
dmckee's comment is the correct approach for... those lacking OCD tendencies... but I often do as you're suggesting, and leave a few approval/rejection votes to spare to deal with the bad stuff. –  Michael Petrotta Dec 2 '12 at 5:34
Fair enough I guess - it's just if I'm up late and spend 2 hours on the queue doing "my bit" as it were, then I've got 22 hours of not being able to do anything in that regard - oh well... –  Jon Clements Dec 2 '12 at 5:39
Some of the rate limiting on Stack Overflow is to prevent abuse, but some of it is to force you to get some sleep. –  Michael Petrotta Dec 2 '12 at 5:43
@MichaelPetrotta I've heard of that word occasionally :) –  Jon Clements Dec 2 '12 at 5:45

1 Answer 1

up vote 4 down vote accepted

As the others have mentioned, you can rest easy knowing that you've done your share and devote your time to other activities.

However, one thing that you could do in metered amounts (as it may up the number of semi-chatty comments in the ecosystem) is to remind new users via a comment that they have an edit pending on their post. For the past few months, users have been receiving a notification now when there is an edit pending on something that they have posted, and a user can approve an edit to their own post unilaterally. I would hazard a guess that people new to SE don't always tune into the "little blue number" that pops up on the supercollider. Of course, by the same logic, they may not be attuned to a red inbox alert of a comment on their question, either, but if they are already vigilantly watching for activity on their question or answer page, the actual comment may not escape their notice. Again, as I know this may generate noise, you should probably restrict doing so to cases of extreme, on the order of hours, "limbo" (as you put it) only.

Failing that, if you're on an edits kick and can't slow down, there may be tag wikis that could use some cleanup (call it research into how others treat the suggested edit approval process!).

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