Retag Privilege taken into account when proposing an edit [closed]

Question

I think that the privilege to retag questions has become obsolete, now that one could propose an edit with only the changed tag and gain 2 rep from it.

But deleting the retag privilege and link should be wrong. So what I propose is, when proposing an edit, if the only change is a change of tag, and if the user who made the edit has the retag privilege, then the change is automatically applied and doesn't need to be approved.

EDIT: To clarify the situation let me give an example:

I wanted to make a retag, and I was half-asleep, I used the edit button instead of the retag button and only added the tag. I got 2 rep for it.

If I used the retag button it would have been taken automatically with no rep, and so it should have been in the scenario described previously.

Answer 1

Yes there was a loophole that allowed you to clog the queue with suggested edits that suggest only editing tags.

In practice this is was not a big issue:

1. People are limited to 1000 rep from suggested edits.
2. People servicing the queue will get "pissed off" and reject edits that abuse the queue in such a way, after 5 strikes in one day you will be banned from suggesting edits for a week.

That said, I just changed it so you must suggest more than a tag edit, if you have retag rights.

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This privilege is still needed, the suggested edit queue is a scarce resource. We do not want to flood it with work that we know people are perfectly capable of doing without direct peer review.

Answer 2

It happened to me too, that I accidentally choosed the way to edit, while a retag would have been the right way.

I explain my behaviour with the different, but similar looking user interfaces for accounts on different topics:

For example:

• link|edit|close|flag on German L&U, rep: 1840
• link|edit|retag|close|flag on Code Golf, rep: 797
• link|edit|retag|flag on Code Review, rep: 330
• link|edit|close|flag on StackExchange, rep: 4767

I used the edit-link before somewhere else, where it was appropriate, and didn't search for another link. I don't know why I can't retag on SE with 4k rep, but on CR with 330 rep. Yes, the borders are higher on SE, but of course it is a trap, to easy step into.

I opened a small rant over here about the misguiding error message; now I'm unsure, what to do.

From the user perspective, a silent acceptance of tag-edits would be preferable. At least the message could be improved - I didn't understand what it tried to tell me.

I suggest something like:

To just retag a question without editing title or body, don't choose the edit-link but the retag-link.

Answer 3

The privilege is still needed.

Yes you can do it via the edit route and gain 2 rep, but you can only gain a maximum of 1,000 points through edits so after a while you'll be doing this for no benefit.

Secondly do you really want to have all your retags approved?