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I'm reviewing edits from a new user who is pretty active and doing a lot of constructive edits. However, he/she puts Ubuntu, brand names and versions into italics which looks weird and is not constructive. I'm improving the edits, however it seems to be an ongoing thing. What would be the best way to convince the user to refrain from those changes:

  • Ping him/her in chat using @[user id] which makes it look like I want to denounce him/her in a public space.
  • Add a comment to one of his/her questions (and delete all of the conversation after it came to a conclusion) which possibly creates a larger set of comments where they don't belong.
  • Reject edits and select "causes harm" to provide a message to the user which might not work at all because other users would still have to reject the edit and this approach is demotivating for the user (I once got blocked on superuser.com because I didn't do enough edits - as I found out after raising the question on meta - and stopped editing posts there for a long time.

I'm aware that it's not the most important thing in the world. I'm just interested which mechanisms the platform provides.

3 Answers 3

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I don't know of any more convenient methods :(

Since, in this case, the user is only making one small style choice that's not appropriate, and assuming their edits are otherwise useful, talking in chat should be ok... "Your edits are great, thanks for improving the site! There's just one thing..."

Of course, if they are suggesting edits that only make the change you mentioned, you can reject them with a message and watch for improvement. If the edits are approved by others you can bother other reviewers in chat about their wrong approvals (sometimes the OP approves an edit, and you can't do much about that) - reviewers can be held to higher standards than casual edit-suggesters. Eventually the message should get through, and if not you can try the other methods.

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    Thanks for the clarification. I'll go with chat, then. Should I open a new chat room for this pretty small issue?
    – Kalle Richter
    Commented Aug 25, 2018 at 6:52
  • @KarlRichter that's a nice idea :) I'll do that in future
    – Zanna Mod
    Commented Aug 25, 2018 at 7:11
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    I was thinking that opening a new room would be good. Usually I've have this kind of conversation in AUGR, partly to encourage the person to hang out there again in future. But as you suggested, maybe it's more comfortable to point out mistakes in a private conversation
    – Zanna Mod
    Commented Aug 25, 2018 at 7:15
  • Will the user get notified if I ping him/her like this: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/82215/review-feedback?
    – Kalle Richter
    Commented Aug 25, 2018 at 9:37
  • @KarlRichter if they have a chat profile you can invite them, but they won't get that ping, I think
    – Zanna Mod
    Commented Aug 25, 2018 at 13:25
  • I think I once got a message like this on pets.SE and I implied in the question that this would work, however it only works if you have the permission. Since you have a lot of reputation, may I ask you to check whether you can super ping the user and deliver the message on my behalf (or on yours if you agree with the content)?!?
    – Kalle Richter
    Commented Aug 25, 2018 at 13:29
  • @KarlRichter unfortunately only mods can do that - it's not a rep-linked privilege. You could comment on one of the user's posts or @ them on one they have edited with a link to the chat - that will ping them
    – Zanna Mod
    Commented Aug 25, 2018 at 16:03
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    I see, I chose the comment approach which is much less elegant, on the other hand it'd contradict the constructive atmosphere if anybody could ping each other, even though in this case it'd be really useful. One alternative would be to join a chatroom where an admin with super-ping privilege can be bothered to send such a ping to invite the user. Thanks for your support.
    – Kalle Richter
    Commented Aug 25, 2018 at 18:13
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Note that if you choose 'Improve Edit' during review, the user who made the suggested edit will be counted as an editor of the post, so they can be 'pinged' (even though their username won't be autocompleted for you). This will keep any possible public denouncement relatively small. You're using comments for (discussion of) improvement of the post, which is more or less what they're meant for. A possible drawback is that the author of the post will be notified of the comments; they might get annoyed.

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I have a canned comment for that:

Welcome to Ask Ubuntu! **;-)** 
Could you please review my **[edits]()** and also review the [editing help](/editing-help) 
to improve the readability of your questions in the future... **;-)**

Then I link to the edit queue in the edits() section (copy-paste of the link "edited x mins/hours/days ago")

In your case you might change:

and also review the editing help to improve the readability of your questions in the future... ;-)

to:

. Please note we don't generally italicise the items you do, so unless you want to edit all 320 thousand questions, better stick to what everyone else is doing... ;-)

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