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I had an edit proposed on one of my questions, and since it did not offer much in the way of improvement, I rejected it. It encouraged me to explore the editor's edit history, where I found a mix of good and bad edits. Sadly a number of the edits that were either of debatable improvement or actively harmful were approved, so I wonder if approvers need to look at Ask Ubuntu reviews more closely?

When drawing attention to problematic editing histories, I prefer not to draw attention to one particular user. Nevertheless it is unavoidable in this case, and at any rate my concern is mainly about the reviewing process rather than the user themselves. The user/revisions are here.

I am seeing these problems:

  • Edits that should be made (e.g. to fix case and spelling errors) are usually untouched
  • Bullet points are added that are not obviously necessary
  • Line breaks are added instead of paragraph breaks
  • Excessive whole-line emboldening is being added and/or paragraphs are turned into headings
  • Pre-formatting for logs was (accidentally) removed

Examples:

These have all been repaired in short order (and the last one was my question, so I rejected it). To be fair, the user is making some good edits too. What is the best approach to deal with this - tackle the reviewing or the editor? I have added some comments for the editor, but whilst they replied, I think they took the criticism personally, and the message has not been heard.

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  • 2
    The second one is different: the reviewer rejected, OP approved.
    – guntbert
    Commented Nov 23, 2015 at 18:49
  • I hadn't spotted that @guntbert, good point. Nevertheless the OP is at minimum rep, and the edit still had to be repaired afterwards.
    – halfer
    Commented Nov 23, 2015 at 18:58
  • @halfer I've also noticed the user in question has edited spelling from correct to incorrect, specifically here: askubuntu.com/posts/701698/revisions Minimum to minumum I've also noticed that every one of his edit reasons is 'fix for better post'
    – Hellreaver
    Commented Nov 23, 2015 at 21:02
  • 1
    also, six minutes ago, his reputation was at 158, now it's at 180. Hopefully it doesn't keep moving in this direction at this magnitude. I'm not sure how edits work, but if you get reputation from questions you have edited, his plan is presumably to keep editing until he's pretty high up.
    – Hellreaver
    Commented Nov 23, 2015 at 21:11
  • 5
    @Hellreaver that particular edit was an accident, I think. OP started with an unformatted post with some spelling mistakes, then later proceeded to fix them, while deleting a log they'd originally included. The editor, probably working with the original post, fixed the formatting, adding back the log. I'm going to "improve" your edit while retaining the log.
    – muru
    Commented Nov 24, 2015 at 0:34
  • 2
    @Hellreaver: unfortunately, one does get +2 for each edit, but up to a limit I think - it's something like 2K. Some people sadly do edit for the rep, but it's hard to tell in individual cases what the motivation is.
    – halfer
    Commented Nov 24, 2015 at 0:39
  • @halfer the motivation is fixing the format. A newbie who has never asked before, they don't know how to ask. They just wrote it like a machine or copy&paste. So if you good at edit why don't you help them instead of focus someone are doing it?
    – BeGood
    Commented Nov 24, 2015 at 2:05
  • @halfer +2 for each edit. Yes but does it worth my time to earn that?. NO!
    – BeGood
    Commented Nov 24, 2015 at 2:07
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    @Hellreaver that particular edit was an accident as pointed out by muru (thanks muru). IMHO this post betraying me, because no one do 100% perfection in edits, will you? I tried my best to do. If there are any mistakes/improvements reviewers will correct. In this post your title pointed reviewers and whole body pointed index towards me?
    – BeGood
    Commented Nov 24, 2015 at 2:47
  • @muru thanks, I edited and then saw that the log was the OP's log. My bad.
    – Hellreaver
    Commented Nov 24, 2015 at 2:49
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    @begood We're not attacking you personally, the point of the question is to see why some of the questionable edits are being approved.
    – Hellreaver
    Commented Nov 24, 2015 at 5:20
  • 1
    @Hellreaver "his plan is presumably to keep editing until he's pretty high up. – Hellreaver 8 hours ago" . I'm sorry I don't understand what are you trying to prove?
    – BeGood
    Commented Nov 24, 2015 at 5:34
  • @BeGood some users ask friends to edit or design bots to raise their rep. I had assumed you were one of those users.
    – Hellreaver
    Commented Nov 24, 2015 at 5:38
  • 2
    @BeGood: I should have made it clearer in my post that my complaint is not, at all, an attack on you. That cannot be stressed enough. The purpose is to see why some of your edits are not being rejected. If you can also learn which edits were not up to scratch, that is an excellent outcome also.
    – halfer
    Commented Nov 24, 2015 at 10:07
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    @BeGood: your last 15 or so edits, since this post, have been very good. Keep it up!
    – halfer
    Commented Nov 25, 2015 at 18:37

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