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I was going to post it as an answer to this question, but thought I'd rather make it a question of myself. I'm also sorry for the epic tautology in the title.

Here's the problem with the minor suggested edits: people do them in a row, changing maybe 1 word in the whole question/answer, wanting the +2 reputation. On the other hand, some reviewers tend to just accept all of those way-too-minor edits hunting for their badge.

Now, if you think about it, rejecting an edit as "too minor" is nowhere near rejecting it like an invalid edit or vandalism or radical change. A too minor edit can still be considered an improvement of the post. It's just a small improvement and we don't feel it's worth +2 reputation. In that case, why do we reject such edits? Yes, we do that to discourage the user who suggested from gaining free rep by doing it. But we also reject an improvement to the post, no matter how small it is. Of course, changing "i" to "I" in 5 places, or fixing the punctuation by adding a comma somewhere isn't worth +2 rep, but you should agree that a post with proper punctuation is better than a post with improper punctuation.

There is nothing bad in a suggested edit that just fixes the spelling of one word. The reason we argue about those edits is the reputation they yield.

So my suggestion is: instead of being rejected, the edits that are too minor should be accepted, but the proposer should not receive the reputation, nor should his badge progress increase. That will:

  • stop people from speed-editing posts for the sake of reputation;
  • stop the too minor edits from being totally wasted.

As a way to implement that, a small "too minor" check-box may be added near the "accept" button. This will also reduce the number of clicks needed to handle the "too minor" suggested edit (sorry, my editing skills suck):

enter image description here

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    The problem isn't so much the reputation, but that every edit, however minor, bumps the post back to the front page. And there's really no reason at all to move current questions out of the way for a minor edit... It might be true though that removing the reputation incentive for minor edits might just do the trick.
    – yannis
    Commented Nov 7, 2012 at 13:41
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    @Yannis, well after those users hit 2k they could as well make all the minor changes they liked without the need for a review. I know they will probably do it more rarely since they will stop getting the reputation, but still.
    – SingerOfTheFall
    Commented Nov 7, 2012 at 13:46
  • @Yannis: I realise this is an old thread, but it would work well if minor edits were allowed and didn't bump at all. I've seen quite a few old posts that I wanted to improve but felt guilty about throwing to the front.
    – Cryptographeur
    Commented Jan 30, 2014 at 13:28

1 Answer 1

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I have mentioned the idea of approve as minor earlier. But there must be one condition. There must be no other problems with the post.

Minor edit:

  • There are no other issues with the post: candidate for approval as minor.
  • There are other issues: improve the post, if there is a lot obvious wrong with the post, uncheck the "this edit is useful".
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  • Yes, that's a good point. I however assume that if the reviewer sees a field for further improvement, he/she presses the "Improve" button, which already has the "suggested edit was useful" box (I really like it). It's sad when instead of that people just reject an edit, but in hope for good I assume that they are the minority.
    – SingerOfTheFall
    Commented Nov 7, 2012 at 13:49
  • One current problem is that if there are several issues to be fixed, there is a significant risk that three other reviewers approve the suggested edit before the Improve is complete. Then you lose your edit!
    – Bo Persson
    Commented Nov 7, 2012 at 16:41
  • @BoPersson, if that happens, I often follow the link to the post and re-edit. It does not count for a review, but we are not here for the badges (at least we pretend to be).
    – Toon Krijthe
    Commented Nov 7, 2012 at 20:45

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