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Occasionally someone edits a bunch of posts incorrectly in the same way. These edits seem to be made in good faith, but the editor's grammar/syntax/spelling is consistently incorrect. Perhaps this has been covered elsewhere, but how can they be contacted and made aware of their error?

One example I encountered recently was someone trying to change every upper case I (i.e. the first-person pronoun) into lower case ones. Since most other parts of their edits were fine, they seemed to be genuinely trying to improve the answer. If their one bad "habit" could be corrected, they could help improve the site.

Would you comment on the post they are trying to edit? But that seems a bit odd, especially if they never look at it again. Just keep rejecting their edits until they stop?

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  • Please include the suggested edit link into your question.
    – Danatela
    Commented Jul 14, 2014 at 3:26
  • 1
    @Danatela I really don't think there is any need, Aibara is asking in a general sense.
    – Seth Mod
    Commented Jul 14, 2014 at 3:28
  • 1
    I think this is an example: askubuntu.com/review/suggested-edits/291807
    – Elder Geek
    Commented Jul 14, 2014 at 19:24
  • 3
    @Sudheer I hope I pinged you before on this. In case I failed you should review this question to improve your performance. Thank you!
    – Elder Geek
    Commented Jul 14, 2014 at 19:27
  • 5
    @Seth anyone who was reviewing edits all know who he is talking about - the other question is - why are some people approving edits like that!?
    – Mateo
    Commented Jul 14, 2014 at 20:25
  • It was indeed the user in the example posted by Elder Geek, though I did mean it more generally since I saw something similar a few weeks ago (can't remember what it was though).
    – Fern Moss
    Commented Jul 14, 2014 at 20:27
  • This is somewhat related to my earlier post meta.askubuntu.com/q/10428/184942
    – Registered User
    Commented Jul 15, 2014 at 5:38
  • 4
    Why on Earth was that suggested edit accepted, @ElderGeek? Weird.
    – TRiG
    Commented Jul 17, 2014 at 10:08
  • @TRiG I couldn't say. I would improve it by correcting the obvious or reject it.
    – Elder Geek
    Commented Jul 17, 2014 at 12:08
  • 1
    Perhaps a tutorial for editors would be helpful. Something like this: vevo.ly/yRwiKB ;-)
    – Elder Geek
    Commented Jul 17, 2014 at 12:49

1 Answer 1

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This is where the @ replies come in handy.

Users become eligible for an @ reply on a post if they do one of the following things:

  • Vote to close the post.

  • Edit the post.

  • Comment on the post.

So in this case including @username in a comment will ping the user. Write out a nice message explaining what they did wrong and what they should change and how to change it (if applicable).

If you find yourself rejecting one of their edits this won't work, so use a custom reject reason instead.

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  • I just did that: a custom reject reason with @username. A bit of a shame because the edit was otherwise OK. But will the reject reason end up as a message in this user's inbox then? If not, how to reach the user?
    – Jos
    Commented Jul 14, 2014 at 12:27
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    @Jos No, that only works in comments. The only way they will see custom reject reasons is if they check it manually.
    – Seth Mod
    Commented Jul 14, 2014 at 13:51
  • @Seth Just to clarify, if you include @username in a comment, will it ping the user even if they haven't responded/interacted with a specific post?
    – Fern Moss
    Commented Jul 14, 2014 at 20:51
  • 1
    @AibaraIduas No, it will only ping the user if he/she meets the bullet-ed points above.
    – Seth Mod
    Commented Jul 15, 2014 at 1:11

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