Recently I got a review ban for 7 days (sorry guys, because I created some sort of issues to this community, I'm very sorry about that).

But I have one question about my ban.

My review page shows details like:

You have made too many incorrect reviews. For an example of a task you should have reviewed differently, see: Come back in 7 days to continue reviewing.

Actually I approved a suggested edit, for that the editor gave the reason for the edit as "burninate run tag". I agreed with him and approved the edit.

In meta there is also a post for Burninate the [run] tag

I approved 3 or 4 similar edits on that same day (it seems right to me because of the above post).

What is the reason for this ban, and what is the issue with that edit approval?

Don't apologize for making a serious inquiry into something you don't understand, and clearly wanting to learn from it. –  Andrew Barber May 2 at 14:38
You may want to take a look at my post, we had quite the discussion yesterday about these very edits. My Post Here. As you can see I also reviewed that edit you linked in your question. –  Ruddy May 2 at 14:41
So you know that edits that are very minor shouldn't be approved, right? Or are you saying that you didn't know that? If you did know that, and you know that you approved a whole bunch of very minor edits, then what's the question? Or are you asserting that those edits aren't minor? I don't understand what you're confused about here. –  Servy May 2 at 14:46
Judging from the number of edit suggestions you've rejected, you're clearly not a robo-reviewer. There's certainly disagreement whether a largish tag should be burninated via a ton of suggested edits, but I have to agree this didn't deserve a review ban. –  Wooble May 2 at 14:46
@Servy: reason for that edit was "burninating run" tag. I'm agreeing with that edit reason. That's why I approved it. –  Midhun MP May 2 at 14:55
@MidhunMP So you don't think that the edit is too minor? You don't know that edits shouldn't be too minor? What? Why is the fact that it's a burnination relevant here? Do you have a source stating that that is a valid exception that allows for very minor edits? –  Servy May 2 at 14:57
@Servy: Yes, I think that is a minor edit. But according to this post… (Anyone can retag a post for burninating also in the linked edit he removed "thanks comments also) –  Midhun MP May 2 at 15:03
@MidhunMP So where in that does it say that these edits are an exception to "too minor"? Where does it encourage mass suggested edits? If in fact specifically states the exact opposite in the "How are tags removed?" section. It goes out of its way to say that you should be cleaning up the entire post, and fixing all of the problems while you're at it. –  Servy May 2 at 15:16
Me I am simply going to stay away from this burninate thing from now on. You think a tag need to be removed? Organize your own little group and go make substantial edits for each question while removing the tag. And leave it off the community bulletin (how do posts end there btw?). –  UmNyobe May 2 at 15:39
@AndrewBarber Op may be apologizing in anticipation to some of the comments (and for what I can read, s/he was right to do it) –  Lamak May 2 at 17:03

1 Answer 1

You, along with several other users were banned from review for apparently automatically approving trivial edits that didn't address all of the issues with the posts being edited. It would have been better if you'd rejected some (if not all) of those edits as "too minor".

At the time I didn't realised that the edits were prompted by a tag burnination request so the ban may have been a little harsh.

However, I still believe that some sort of "hey, stop what you're doing and think!" message was appropriate.

You should judge a suggested edit on it's own merits and not just think "oh, this is part of a tag removal process so I don't need to consider all the other things that might be wrong with the question".

I'll lift your ban, but please pay more attention to suggested edits in future to make sure that they address all the issues with the post and not just one narrow aspect.

@ChrisF: Is there a particular reason than an edit should attempt to address all that is wrong ? Especially in the field of software development, it seemed to me that the incremental improvement mentality (as suggested by Agile practices) was displacing the right on first time mentality (as suggested by Waterfall practices). –  Matthieu M. May 2 at 16:21
@MatthieuM. I'm interested in this too. Seems worthy of its own post though. –  Adam Smith May 2 at 16:29
I'm completely agreeing with @MatthieuM. point. I have in the past accepted edits that looked right to me, even though they weren't adressing every problem in the post. I am in particular lenient with Tag management edits... Edit to add: Matthieu, if you post a related question, please link it here, I don't really stalk meta so i could miss it but i would like to put my voice with yours –  samy May 2 at 16:30
@MatthieuM. Perhaps fixing everything is a bit strong, but where there are clearly other problems with the post then these should be addressed by the suggested edit. Plus, you can incrementally improve all you like once you hit 2,000 rep. Before that you're asking for three other people to spend some of their valuable time checking what you've done. –  ChrisF May 2 at 16:35
@ChrisF that's a slippery slope I'd rather not go down. We don't impose separate rules for users based on reputation, only allow separate privileges for those who have gained enough reputation. Your comment is saying it's not allowed to make incremental improvements on posts, BUT IF YOU'VE BEEN AROUND ENOUGH IT'S OK. Rather we should say either "Fix everything in a post or don't edit it," or "Incremental improvements are okay." The reputation barrier shouldn't come into it. –  Adam Smith May 2 at 16:38
@ChrisF "Too minor" seems like really confusing terminology here. And this text is completely confusing: "This edit is too minor; suggested edits should be substantive improvements addressing multiple issues in the post." This really makes it sound like a post just plain can't be edited if it only has one or two very small problems. I get the same impression from Servy's comments on the question. –  Ben Aaronson May 2 at 16:40
@BenAaronson: I agree, I have regularly seen edits on my answers be rejected because they only added a ; or corrected one typo. Yes they were minor, but they also were the difference between working code and non-working code... and even more troubling, once rejected I, the author of the answer, cannot even decide to accept them nonetheless :x –  Matthieu M. May 2 at 16:46
@AdamSmith The separate rules imposed here are part of the privilege separation, though. Below 2K, users cannot edit; only suggest them. Because Suggested Edits behave different (give rep, require three other peoples' time), they are held to a slightly different standard. –  Billy Mailman May 2 at 17:09
@BillyMailman I'm not unaware of the implementation details, but from a design perspective this is perverse. That an edit could be acceptable from a 2k+ user but not a <2k user is just bad design if the goal is to have SO have the BEST questions possible. –  Adam Smith May 2 at 17:24
So, in the review that you specifically called out what other changes should the editor have made? And why is it better for a reviewer to reject the edit out right and lose the two improvements that were made? –  Martin Smith May 2 at 17:27
@ChrisF I just don't see the purpose in restricting ANY edit that is "too minor." Adding even a single punctuation mark, if correct, is still a useful edit. In my limited experience it doesn't seem like the review queue for edits is ever particularly overloaded (unlike close votes) so I would suggest "Too Minor" be removed from the list of reasons to reject an edit. I think this is deserving of its own Meta post, however, and I don't have time to make one up at the moment. –  Adam Smith May 2 at 18:04
@AdamSmith as I said though, If your edit has to be reviewed by others (three in the case of SO) you better make it a good one. –  ChrisF May 2 at 18:06
@ChrisF my point is that there doesn't seem to be any strain on those reviewing edits, at least at SO (I'm not active on any other sites). Maybe the belief that the edit "better be a good one" is overzealous. In my opinion, any CORRECT edit should be accepted. –  Adam Smith May 2 at 18:11
A discussion about edits being too minor has been posted:…. @AdamSmith –  jpmc26 May 3 at 0:44
I disagree with the philosophy of not allowing minor edits. It just means I'm unlikely to contribute to cleaning up issues that span multiple posts. I'm more willing to contribute to Wikipedia, even though I generally just chip away at minor issues as and when I see them. I very much dislike how SE happily turns down edits even if they are an improvement. If rep-farming is the issue that people are concerned about, then users should be allowed to give-up the +2 rep and mark it as minor if they are not bothered about silly points but just want to make our shared knowledge better. –  James Haigh May 4 at 22:51

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