Do we need a Bat-Signal on Meta, calling in help when the edit queue is full?

Question

So, the edit queue on SO seems to be full for the last days or so. That's a tough situation. What I saw is that every time somebody raises this issue here on Meta the queue starts to drop significantly (at least that's what I saw yesterday, when it dropped within 10 minutes by 50 edits).

This spawns the thought in my brain that there are actually many high-rep-SO-users here on Meta which are willing to help with that, but simply do not bother to look at the queue or even Stack Overflow itself (anymore).

Would it help if we had some kind of "status of the parent"-section here in the header of Meta, which displays such information and raises bathelp-signal whenever the queue gets alarming high?

Answer 1

I am not sure adding this on meta is the right place. Only a very small amount of meta users have the rights to approve edits. The fact the queue has been ailing is a symptom of a bigger issue; I would like to attack the root cause.

In particular:

1. The volume of suggested edits was much increased in the last few days.
2. Quite a few key users who approve edits were out of votes.
3. We have some workflow issues, people keep on seeing the same edits in random mode (even though they do not know how to handle them) - usually gets much worse as the queue fills up.

To attack this:

1. I increased the amount of suggested edit votes that a user can cast.
2. I increased the queue size to 200 as a stop gap (to handle the large load increase)
3. I am thinking of a clean UI that allows you to stop seeing the same edits you can not handle, over and over again (an ignore button perhaps)

I like that meta gets involved at resolving this, but want to build a system that can work without pulling in people from meta. (Where do we stop then and inbox message to users who vote on edits a lot soliciting help, an email perhaps ... it is a dangerous game to play)

_{also we kind of have a bat signal ... so many of the posts on meta in the last day are about suggested edits}

Answer 2

Not having full access to any edit queue, I can't comment on this.

But I can save the devs a bit of work and create the display for it:

javascript:$('body').append($('<img src="https://i.sstatic.net/HWIXw.png" id=batsymb>'));function A(){for(i=0;i-DIL;i++){DIS=DI[i].style;DIS.position="absolute";DIS.left=Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5+"px";DIS.top=Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5+"px"}R++}R=0;x1=.1;y1=.05;x2=.25;y2=.24;x3=1.6;y3=.24;x4=300;y4=200;x5=300;y5=200;DI=$("#batsymb");DIL=DI.length;setInterval(A,20);void 0

(it's a bookmarklet--try it)

Answer 3

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only 10K SO user who spends way, way more time here on MSO than on SO. If you guys were to throw up a signal when the SO edit queue were full, I for one would be happy to jump over there and help out.

Why not put a link to the SO queue in the MSO header when it starts to get clogged? But only if you have sufficient SO rep to actually access the queue, obviously.

Something like this?

Answer 4

When enough questions are in the edit queue, there is a little orange button next to the review link with the # of questions in the queue (at least, I think that's the case.... I'm not that familiar with the internal workings of SE and its not active now so I can't verify this)

I spent a lot of time not knowing what that was, or thinking it was something I shouldn't touch, but perhaps you can add a tooltip to that button for users who are active on SO, but not on meta, that says something like "Help! Our edit queue needs the attention of high-rep users like you!"

Should be fairly simple to implement, and would have a similar effect as creating something on meta (except the people seeing it are high-rep users who browse SO, not MSO users, which I think is better)

...

and perhaps change the orange square to a bat icon too for the sake of bat-lovers everywhere? :)