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In the sites FAQ it states

"Please don’t use signatures or taglines in your posts, or they will be removed."

Though these edits are sometimes rejected for being too minor. If edits are going to be rejected for this reason, should the above statement be included in the FAQ?

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  • 6
    Note that suggested edits aren't the only way a post may be edited.
    – Michael Petrotta
    Commented Dec 20, 2011 at 22:35
  • 1
    You could spend the rest of your life editing out signatures and taglines.
    – user7116
    Commented Dec 21, 2011 at 2:48

2 Answers 2

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Though these edits are sometimes rejected for being too minor.

If you wanna make the most of editing on Stack Exchange, you should read In Defense of Editing:

If you are going to edit a post, make sure you’re substantively improving it. Avoid making isolated, trivial edits, as they are the source of much friction. For example, don’t bother changing “its” to “it’s” unless you have several other edits to make in the same post. There has to be a legitimate case that your edit made multiple changes transforming the post from good to great — or at least substantively improving it.

...

To be very specific, I would discourage editing a post solely to remove salutations like “hi” and “thanks”. That’s just adding an unnecessary edit on top of an unnecessary set of salutations. I completely agree that salutations add little to a question or answer, but if you’re going to take the time to go in and remove salutations, fix the whole post while you’re at it! If there’s nothing else to edit, then don’t bother.

These guidelines are good ones to follow whenever you're editing, regardless of whether you need someone to approve the results or not. If you're stepping in to improve the post, do everything in your power to accomplish that goal - don't make one little change and then call it a day.

Do we discourage signatures? Sure. Is the presence of a sig reason enough to edit an otherwise perfectly-good post? Probably not. Make your edits count for something.

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  • And that's me told lol Thanks for a good answer
    – Darren Burgess
    Commented Dec 20, 2011 at 22:58
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Suggested edits that fix just a small part of what should be fixed are sometimes rejected. The reason is that, if you are going to edit a post, you should edit as much as you can to make the post more understandable, without changing its meaning. Imagine the situation we would have, if the same post is edited by different users who, one after the other:

  • edit the post to remove signatures, or taglines
  • edit the post to change the spelling of the first person singular
  • edit the post to correct the punctuation
  • edit the post to add a link to a page with relevant information
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    It's not widely known that editing by 5 different people or 12 edits, will cause the question to become Community Wiki - so it's important to filter minor edits IMO. Sometimes it's even better to notify one of the editors and ask him to edit again.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Dec 21, 2011 at 7:58
  • That's correct, and a good reason for not having more than one user doing the editing, when the same could be done from a single user.
    – avpaderno
    Commented Dec 21, 2011 at 21:34
  • "Imagine the situation we would have, if the same post is edited by different users who, one after the other:" I don't understand. This sounds to me like a good thing.
    – Karl Knechtel
    Commented Dec 27, 2023 at 14:17
  • @KarlKnechtel What is a good think in four people who do four different edits when a single person could do them and more? I mean, apart that they each gain two reputation points for small edits.
    – avpaderno
    Commented Dec 27, 2023 at 17:18
  • The good thing is that people are cooperating on what is supposed to be a collaborative project, and there is an edit log that gives a separate reason for each change - the same benefit as having fine-grained commits in version control.
    – Karl Knechtel
    Commented Dec 27, 2023 at 17:24
  • @KarlKnechtel With version control, there are not 10 people who make 10 commits for a file that has been reported in an issue.
    – avpaderno
    Commented Dec 27, 2023 at 18:04
  • It is also quoted in the other answer: If you are going to edit a post, make sure you’re substantively improving it.
    – avpaderno
    Commented Dec 27, 2023 at 18:06

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