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Minor suggested edits to old posts
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:
- Could we have a way to edit without bumping posts?
- How should we approach large numbers of edits made all at once?
One of the linked questions, about not bumping minor edits, has a suggestion that would have helped in this case: allow …
9mo ago
My own view is that even minor edits are valuable, even on old posts. I appreciate that there will sometimes be reason t …
9mo ago
I rejected several of the edits as post author, not as a moderator. Edits to the content were trivial at best, usually …
9mo ago
I am the user mentioned in this question. I believe that submitting an edit just for removing or adding a tag is not …
9mo ago
I strongly oppose the refusal to accept these tag edits. Many of the edits were declined by the same reviewer with simil …
9mo ago
5 answers
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I strongly oppose the refusal to accept these tag edits. Many of the edits were declined by the same reviewer with similar reasons, namely that "it's not worth bumping posts for silly tags". This is incorrect reviewing. This is an incorrect reason for declining edits. The reason is quite simple: correctly tagging posts is crucial to this site. Tags aren't just keywords; tags are the way we organize posts. If all posts had been correctly tagged in the first place, or these issues had been fixed early, we wouldn't have been in a situation where we'd have the problem of inactive posts getting bumped. Refusal to fix the tagging only postpones the problem.
The fact that posts get bumped for such minor edits, is a flaw in the system, not a flaw in the edit. Don't punish users, nor our knowledge base, for a flaw in the software.
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One of the linked questions, about not bumping minor edits, has a suggestion that would have helped in this case: allow edit reviewers to decide if an edit is minor. For that to happen, at last two people were involved, and the owner of the post is also notified of the edit suggestion. If we did just that part, without tackling the larger "minor edits" problem that has to account for direct edits too, then there would be no problem with things like the current situation (adding required tags to old questions that predated the requirement) or small typos.
I propose the following:
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A reviewer can approve normally (bumps), reject normally, or approve as minor edit. (Exact UI TBD.)
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A minor edit does not bump the post in the question list.
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But the "last activity" timestamp/attribution is updated.
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Minor edits are marked as such in the post history.
This means you could, in principle, see a question on page 37 with "last activity 15m ago". But if you look at the history you'll see why, so I think that's ok. I do feel that "last changed by so-and-so at such-and-such time" markers should not lie.
We could also consider adding a filter or other option to allow users to see every bump (current behavior) versus not bumping reviewer-designated minor edits. Moderators and active curators might prefer to see everything.
My own view is that even minor edits are valuable, even on old posts. I appreciate that there will sometimes be reason to reject such edits, but I would not personally take the age of a post into account when making that decision.
Until reading Olin Lathrop's answer, I hadn't realised that all the rejections were Olin's on his own posts. I now understand that part of the reason for the rejections was the quantity of edits, which seems important enough for a separate Meta discussion:
I appreciate Olin's point that some Meta questions are no longer relevant due to changes in how the site works, so editing them seems redundant. Personally I would still be inclined to accept an edit even in such a case.
New users sometimes read back through old discussions so I would like those discussions to be as clear and unambiguous as possible, even if they are no longer relevant and only being read for historical interest. In cases where there is a danger of misleading new users who read an old post, I would prefer to edit to add a note to that effect, rather than avoid editing the post (which doesn't prevent a new user finding it by other means).
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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.
I am the user mentioned in this question.
I believe that submitting an edit just for removing or adding a tag is not enough.
BUT if you look at those questions, none of them have [discussion], [support], [bug] or [feature-request].
My guess is that at that time these were not required, so some questions didn't include them. But they are required now. Nobody can write a question in the present time without including one of these tags.
I edited such a post and clicked submit, then an error came saying that the post doesn't have a required tag. And just like that all my work on that post was back to point 0. So I thought why not add the required tag to such posts.
Not having a required tag in a question:
- Makes it look like that post has "broken" the site.
- Makes it difficult to search questions and categorize them broadly based on the four required tags.
- It is a "required tag" so every question should have one. Otherwise it may be confusing.
I believe that adding a required tag isn't that "minor", because of the above reasons.
But I agree that for such edits the post should not be bumped. But also this is just a one-time case of edits since from a point of time since they were made mandatory, every question has a required tag.
I would have also opposed an edit for just some normal tags.
But I am happy to learn more about the site's policies on such edits.
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