My edit was incorrectly rejected as spam

Question

The horror history about Do reviewers need more coffee? continues...

My edit was rejected by 3 user that deemed the suggestion as spam. I directed them to all the resources that explain what I was doing and why. How could be that the reviewers are saying that my edit is spam?

Here is the description of the edit:

Removed the embeded answer, the answer is already here https://stackoverflow.com/a/9820352/792066 . Please read Do reviewers need more coffee? before taking action

I believe the fault lies with the initial reviewer, and then follow reviewer just repeated his actions (monkey see, monkey do?).

Now I believe my suggestions will be weighted down by the system and I will be in some kind of a grey list for introducing so called "spam".

So, I would ask 3 things:

• Please, some kind of auditory for the suggested edits review queue with edits that are like this since it is not my first time some edit is rejected by some inappropriate reason.

• That that suggested edit isn't counted in my reject reasons. Is not deserved and the system could deny me doing perfectly valid edits in the future.

• Remind reviewers, somehow, such as a big announcement in the queue that removing answers from the questions is perfectly valid edit. Include it somewhere in the FAQ, or remit users to seeing the "Queues best practice"; I don't know how this could be accomplished.

Answer 1

Your edit looks correct to me, and rejecting it was indeed inappropriate.

In addition to the edit being appropriate, there was a good edit reason to put it into context and ensure that it wouldn't be interpreted as vandalism. As others have said, the revision note could have been better, I agree, but what was there is, in my eyes, good enough that it really is the fault of the reviewer if they reject such an edit.

That said, people often review quickly and don't look at reviews in as much depth as they should. While the edit should have been approved, it's at least understandable that some reviewers would be inclined to reject it at first glance, so I'm not particularly surprised that it's rejected, even though it shouldn't be.

Now I believe my suggestions will be weighted down by the system and I will be in some kind of a grey list for introducing so called "spam".

If enough of your edits are rejected then you will be banned form suggesting edits for a week. It takes like 20 or so rejections within a week, if memory serves.

Please, some kind of auditory for the suggested edits review queue with edits that are like this since it is not my first time some edit is rejected by some inappropriate reason.

There have been problems with reviewers throughout its entire history. People have been working to address the various problems throughout that time. Some things have helped, some have hurt, and some haven't changed much. If you have specific suggestions as to how to improve the queue, then by all means, propose them. Note that there have been a lot of discussions on the topic however, so try to look through past discussions on the topic to see if your idea has already been brought up, or is even already in place.

Also keep in mind that it's pretty hard to suggest improvements to the queue if you haven't ever actually used it, merely been on the side suggesting edits. If you really would like to improve it you're probably best off waiting until you have enough rep to use it, and then using it for some time (a few weeks at least) before you're familiar enough with it's problems to knowledgeably suggest improvements.

That that suggested edit isn't counted in my reject reasons. Is not deserved and the system could deny me doing perfectly valid edits in the future.

If you end up being edit banned then you can petition to have it looked into. If you don't end up getting enough rejections to be banned before the rejections are old enough to not count then nobody is hurt, and it's really not worth mod intervention. If you get banned, and would like to dispute some of the edits, then you can contact the moderation team and they might intervene.

Remind reviewers, somehow, such as a big announcement in the queue that removing answers from the questions is perfectly valid edit. Include it somewhere in the FAQ, or remit users to seeing the "Queues best practice"; I don't know how this could be accomplished.

Honestly, I just don't see enough of these types of edits to warrant such behavior. There are other types of edits that are made much more often that have a higher error rate.

Answer 2

Was your edit accurate?

Yes, it was. The meta post you link covers the reason why. Answers/solutions don't belong in the question body.

Were the reviewers wrong to reject it?

Yes, but your edit comment could have been more accurate. And by accurate, I mean more specific with some smaller words. You forget that many of our members are not native English speakers so a word like "embedded" might not register quickly for them. Reviewers unfortunately move too quickly.

Also, the links were unnecessary. No one was going to follow it (especially since the URL's are not parsed in the message, so they would have had to copy and paste it) and they just distracted from what you were trying to do.

A better way to phrase it might have been:

Removing solution that was edited into the question. The solution already exists as another answer on this question.

It is very simple, doesn't have links to answers or links to meta posts, and someone going quickly will recognize it for what you are trying to accomplish

So, we can be done about it

Very little. Like I said, the edit description could have been a little clearer, but other than that, when you edit a posts as much as you did without full edit privileges, you have to accept that edits will be rejected. So you have 2 choices, live with the rejections or stop making such significant edits until you have 2K.

Answer 3

As one of the reviewers who rejected your edit, I can provide my story.

I did read your comment and look at the meta post, but I just now realized that your edit was to a question, not an answer. When I reviewed the edit, I thought you were removing part of an answer, so the meta post didn't make sense, so I rejected it as defacing the post (not as spam). The answer in there put me in answer mode, and I didn't think to check if it was an answer or not. If I had realized it was a question you were editing, I wouldn't have rejected it. I don't know about the other reviewers, but that's what happened when I saw it.

Sorry about that, I'll make sure to pay closer attention on whether suggestions are on a question or an answer from now on.

To help in the future, you may want to consider summarizing the meta post and putting something like "answers should not be included in questions" in your edit comment to make it more obvious you're editing a question.

Answer 4

I think in this case you're overanalyzing things a bit: the most likely reason for the 3 rejections is that the reviewers didn't read the edit comment/summary. They probably just saw that you removed a lot of code from the question and rejected it in a knee-jerk reaction instead of investigating further.

Your edit is perfectly fine, and the edit summary is well-written.

I know there are times when reviewers make mistakes like this. But don't let this stop you from continuing to make edits. For what it's worth, even though your edit was rejected, something good did come out of it – Beau saw that the edit was wrongly rejected and made the edit himself. And most of the time, correct suggested edits do get approved.

What can be done about these situations?

I think a pretty effective solution would be to make review audits harder. Right now review audits simply deter robo-reviewing (i.e. reviewing without looking at the edit), but I believe audits can be used to promote good reviewing practices (such as reading the edit summary) up to a certain extent.

For starters, we could add reviews like this as review audits (with a specific explanation of what the reviewer did wrong if he fails the audit). That ought to make reviewers start reading edit summaries if they haven't been doing so before.