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I'd like to present a case related to Let me reward a good edit on my question/answer. If you close this as a dup to that, Ché Sera, Sirrah!

I submit that the three most valuable contributions to the sites, in descending order, are:

  1. Good Answers
  2. 'Rescue' edits
  3. Good questions

What do I mean by a 'rescue edit'? Very, very, frequently, an OP with a real question in his or her head writes a question that is nearly impenetrable to the audience. Perhaps their English is only so-so. Perhaps they are misusing a term.

Mostly, these questions just get closed. Or, sometimes worse, they attract a clutch of answers that make the problem worse.

From time to time, however, someone sees through the murk and edits to a comprehensible result. Often, the critical edit is a repair to the title.

Sure, one could design some complex badge criteria to try to specially recognize this. Would reputation be more consistent with the rest of the process? This leads to either some opportunity to vote edits, or another case (like an accepted answer) in which some set of circumstances leads to rep.

Any chance, team?

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  • 5
    Related: A nomination for the Medal of (editing) Honor
    – Tim Stone
    Nov 6, 2011 at 15:14
  • 6
    Que Sera, Sera.
    – tvanfosson
    Nov 6, 2011 at 15:18
  • 3
    'k Syrah, Shiraz.
    – Shog9
    Nov 6, 2011 at 17:40
  • I'd like to nominate myself for this one. I was chuffed to bits with my work here: stackoverflow.com/questions/7987799/… of course, duty is its own reward and all that...
    – jrturton
    Nov 6, 2011 at 18:08
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    The problem with rescue edits is that it's usually impossible to tell if it was the correct rescue edit. I've seen tons of questions where it's very hard to tell what is being asked and any of 4 or 5 interpretations could be correct. Just because someone found the courage to pin it to one of those interpretations doesn't mean it's the one the OP asked about. And the OP almost never responds in these cases.
    – Joachim Sauer
    Nov 7, 2011 at 7:14
  • The problem is I wouldn't want to encourage heroic edits of crud that should be nuked.
    – Benjol
    Nov 7, 2011 at 9:41
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    As one who sometimes perform such edits, I would love to see such system in place. As realistic person, can't really see this happening. @Joachim has very good point, plus I'm pretty sure that if you'll allow the community to "upvote" edits, the common formatting edits will get most votes, with the heroic edits getting maybe bit more.
    – Shadow Wizard Strikes Back
    Nov 7, 2011 at 15:21

1 Answer 1

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One idea is to expand the bounty system slightly to add a new bounty category and allow editors of the question or answers to be targeted to receive that bounty.

This bounty is to reward a specific edit on a post.

This would use the existing machinery for awarding rep from one user to another and leaves the "criteria" for what constitutes a "great" edit up to user awarding the bounty.

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4
  • I don't understand this. Who offers the bounty and why?
    – The Unhandled Exception
    Nov 6, 2011 at 17:15
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    You could always just give a bounty to one of their good answers on a random question and use the "Other" reason to describe why you're really doing it. @TheUnhandledException Whoever really liked the edit, and because they really liked the edit.
    – agf
    Nov 6, 2011 at 17:37
  • I've wanted this in the past, but never really felt compelled to randomly select something else for a bounty. I want to reward the specific good behavior I saw.
    – sarnold
    Nov 6, 2011 at 23:17
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    Ah ha -- I understand now, this is an alternative to Rosinante's suggestion which could be used to reward editors when high-rep users see their work.
    – The Unhandled Exception
    Nov 7, 2011 at 12:42

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