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I know this comes up all the time but I just want to bring it back one more time.

When low rep users edit questions and answers can they please make sure they actually contribute to the post with their edits.

Today, again, the edit queue is full of one tag edits and, most annoying of all, editing capital letters on things like Windows or Ubuntu, these edits clog the queue and do not actually make any noticeable improvement to the post as suggested in the help section.

I don't want to point fingers and I encourage people to make good edits but the one that drove me to write this was an edit of hdmi to HDMI, that was it, how is that any kind of improvement to the OP ?

I am rejecting these kind of edits regularly and am not the only one, I can see the vote counts, so am not alone in wanting to avoid this.

So to summarize, can editors with less than 2000 rep, please make sure your edits are improving the actual content of the post and are not just superficial ?.

To make this a question and not a rant, does anyone disagree with me ? and do you like to see / actively encourage these kind of edits ?

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  • 13
    Please do continue to reject these edits.
    – Seth Mod
    Commented Dec 14, 2015 at 15:12
  • 4
    Honestly, I am a Grammar Nazi. These edits do help make the world (or at least AskUbuntu) a better place. It takes just as long to accept an edit as it does to reject it.
    – Daniel
    Commented Dec 20, 2015 at 3:28
  • 1
    I think you missed the point a bit (or I was not too clear). I had a perfect example of this just yesterday, someone had edited in just a single tag, while ignoring some unformatted code and not adding in a image that was linked, that was a useless edit. The issue is these type of edits are wasting the (two) reviewers time, as they (should) read the whole post then check the edits, while you can say these are improvements they do not make the question easier to understand and very often overlook major flaws that need to be addressed.
    – Mark Kirby
    Commented Dec 20, 2015 at 11:19
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    While you are bellow 2000 rep, you are also requiring two other users to take the time to approve the post and, if there were only one or two edits, this would not be an issue, but when the queue is full (30+) of these edits, it gets old fast and we only get 20 votes each, so our time and privileges are wasted on inconsequential edits. One othere issue with this (you can find other meta posts on it) is rep farming i.e. You get two rep for an edit, so, make a hundred small useless edits and get some easy rep, this wastes our time also.
    – Mark Kirby
    Commented Dec 20, 2015 at 11:25
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    Once you get 2000 rep, you only waste your time so go nuts, no one will have an issue with it then, the issue is, most don't, they stop editing when they stop earning rep for it. Unfortunately until that point you are at the mercy of the reviewers and popular opinion is to discourage this by low rep users. Sorry for the essay, but it is a complex issue. @Daniel ^^
    – Mark Kirby
    Commented Dec 20, 2015 at 11:32
  • Got it thanks..
    – Daniel
    Commented Dec 20, 2015 at 15:55

2 Answers 2

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The system is as it is to permit such edits (unfortunately).

To quote Seth♦ though:

Please do continue to reject these edits. – Seth♦ 3 hours ago

These tiny edits may slip through the cracks but that's why the review queue exists in the first place.

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Why do you reject edits which make answers better? If there are other things to improve, which the editor missed, then "reject and edit" is the appropriate response. However, if there is nothing else to be edited on a post, then an improvement is an improvement, and should be accepted as such.

Why are you striving to resist improvements to the knowledgebase you're building?

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    Why should reject and edit be the appropriate response? There are two reviewers, and even if both were too busy to fix the post, each should still pick reject. The point is that the editor is wasting two people's time, and enabling them just because I don't have enough time is not the right thing to do. There are costs associated with "improvements".
    – muru
    Commented Dec 16, 2015 at 16:47
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    Because an edit that changes the capitalization of an acronym in between a hundread other errors (to make it extremely obvious) encourages flooding the queue with arguably useful edits which waste reviewers' time, reviewers who (if they want to do things properly) are forced to edit all the other problems before allowing the edit in. Why should they waste their time doing the work of the editor, moreover giving to the latter reputation for an absolutely useless edit?
    – kos
    Commented Dec 16, 2015 at 16:49
  • @kos "Reject and edit" does not give the editor any rep. Nor does "skip", if that's your preference.
    – TRiG
    Commented Jan 7, 2016 at 11:48
  • Fair enough, I misread your post, what I said above was referred to edits which change the capitalization of a word when other critical things should be corrected. Sorry about that. But still I disagree that edits which change only the capitalization of "Ubuntu" or "Windows" should be approved, even if that's the only "problem" with the post. They're not really worth two reviewers' time, that's my point. If a 2K+ user comes by they still can correct the problem eventually.
    – kos
    Commented Jan 7, 2016 at 12:11

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