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Comments on Minor suggested edits to old posts

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Minor suggested edits to old posts

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There have recently been several edits in a short period of time by a single user. This user does not yet have the Edit Posts ability, so all of the edits are suggested edits, which require review by someone with the Edit Posts ability.

The outcomes of the suggested edits affect whether this user will also gain the Edit Posts ability. Some of the edits have been approved, and some rejected, even though the approved and rejected edits were similar. This makes it difficult for a user to judge which edits they should make and which edits they should avoid, making it difficult for a well meaning user to gain the Edit Posts ability.

Can we discuss whether edits for typos, formatting, and missing tags should be considered acceptable on old posts? I have my own opinion on this, but I'm aiming to keep the question neutral. I believe an answer either way will be more useful to users suggesting edits than having mixed responses to their suggestions.

Related

This discussion is about whether minor edits should happen on old posts. There are also closely related discussions:

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I rejected several of the edits as post author, not as a moderator. Edits to the content were trivial at best, usually none. One suggested edit made the title longer without adding any meaning, thereby making it worse. In most cases, the only change was the addition of a tag.

The fact the questions hadn't had activity for three years also weighed into my decisions. In some cases, the whole topic wasn't relevant anymore because we'd moved on, the site software had progressed, etc.

I considered the cost of popping up old posts from by-gone times to be not worth the tag update.

The large simultaneous number of these edits also factored into my decision. If we really want to nitpick and clean up tags on old posts, it should be done slowly to avoid conflicting with the real current content. If there had been a single suggested edit, I might have thought "Yeah OK. Whatever.".

Even then, I'd have to consider whether it was really worth it. Tags and our usage of them evolve over time. I really don't want to see all old posts dredged up whenever current tag philosophy would require a change.

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Not a good reason to decline tag edits (1 comment)
Not a good reason to decline tag edits

Well, thanks for clarifying the situation here; that's useful, and does put these cases in a slightly different light. However, I still disagree with the reason you described in the review comments, as well as these parts:

I really don't want to see all old posts dredged up whenever current tag philosophy would require a change.

If we really want to nitpick and clean up tags on old posts, it should be done slowly to avoid conflicting with the real current content.

If we're actually going to still host old content that's not directly relevant anymore (which we should), retagging it to fit current standards, is only part of our maintenance job on this site.

For conflicting with current content, the only way I can see that holding true, is because posts are bumped on the front page (or when ordered by activity). That's really not a problem with the edits, hence not a reason to decline them. If anything, it's an indicator we have to prioritize fixing the bumping issue.