Warning reviewers if the sugested edit was made by an anonymous user

Question

What I asked is basically for robot-approvers.

Many times, while I was reviewing, I come across scenarios where I saw a suggested edit have problems (invalid or too minor etc). When I try to reject it, system warns me, stated the edit had accepted. It takes greater effort if the post required rollback.

That is already known as robot-approvers problem

But when it comes to edits suggested by anonymous users, it is a bit different. Do we have stats showing that anonymous edits are helpful? shows data of the anonymous suggested edits.

Edit suggestions by anonymity is the best choice for people who wants to spam or vandalize SX sites. Since many StackExchange sites have a high visitor count and have higher ranks in search engine results, it is a good place to tell people about your products by spamming existing posts. Or just vandalize them for no logical reason. Because you do not risk much. There is no need to create an account and banned IP addresses can be handled easily with some programs or changing the IP.

And when such posts reviewed by robot-approvers, then results might be worse. If the post is not detected by somebody else, then it may stay in that condition for a long time.

My suggestion is, a kind of notification box can be placed above the post in review screen stating that edit is suggested by an anonymous user and reviewer must be careful for potencial spam or vandalism acts.

My aim is not flagging anonymous suggestions like second class citizens. But data in above link shows the rate of useful suggestions from anonymous users and we do have robot-approvers. At least, robot-approvers may be more careful about that suggestions or just skip it.

Answer 1

I don't think this idea is really useful. Reviewers should be watching out anyway and if they need to be told that a user is anonymous in their face as a "watch out" message, it's a sign that they aren't reviewing carefully in general. Regardless, it's worthy to note that the very same people who robo-approve are the ones who are less likely to heed to warnings. There is also a system in place which (should) detect possible vandalism to posts and warn the user of that.

Any user can suggest vandalism, whether they are a registered user or suggest edits anonymously. There are quite a few accounts which create spam questions and answers on here which get removed quickly. If you see a edit that vandalises a post get approved, flag the post using "other" and describe the situation -- if found to be valid, moderators usually review ban the relevant users who approved the edit.

As previously said by others, the problem is not that there are anonymous users but that robo-approvers are approving everything in sight. They don't read the post in the first place, so what makes you think they are going to read some "nanny talk" that we place near the question? People don't read the numerous warnings we give about question quality (that we show to every new user), nor are the edit warnings particularly effective -- it's unlikely that throwing text at these sorts of people will help.

In the end, it comes down to the same issue with robo-approvers that we've always had, and which has been discussed numerous times by different people, from here to here to here.