I have noticed a regular stream of meaningless edit proposals arriving in the suggested edits page. For example, in the one for this post: XML attributes and their corresponding related methods. The proposed edit added a comma, removed a question mark, and also removed the word please from the bottom of the post. Another that I saw much earlier today simply changed a letter c
to a letter s
(changed advice to advise).
These edits are inane, worthless, and score the proposer 2 reputation points if they are approved. How long will it be before we get the spelling police going over the posts of every non-native English speaker that posts a question? How long will it be before someone decides that colour needs to be corrected to color, or behaviour needs to be corrected to behavior? Personally I reject these edits if I see them, as they add nothing to the post.
I don't know if there is an easy way to prevent these types of edits. Maybe:
- the system could refuse the edit if it is too small (i.e. x number of letters changed for every y number of words in the post) and doesn't take place in a code block
- if a user accumulates a certain number of rejections for their proposed edits then they are blocked from doing any more for a period of time
- if a user has an edit rejected, they lose one reputation point. This means low reputation points users just looking to game some reputation points may think twice about the quality of their edit. If they continue to be a nuisance then they slowly lose reputation points for it.
Other suggestions are welcome!