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Is there a way to suggest that a decision by the "Community" bot could be wrong? I recently made (i.e. suggested) a minor edit to a question, mostly to remove the SHOUTING, which was rejected by Community".

The edit was: https://stackoverflow.com/suggested-edits/212579

But no reason for the rejection was given. Perhaps it was simply too minor an edit, which I would be happy to accept. But I'm curious.

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    Apparently someone else thought that the shouting was needed: stackoverflow.com/revisions/9524033/2
    – random
    Commented Mar 1, 2012 at 22:49
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    Yes, your edit wasn't rejected by Community, but improved by another user who felt your suggested edit wasn't helpful, for whatever reason. Community just happens to be the one who is used for the rejection. This is why we should change how suggested edits appear to others.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Mar 1, 2012 at 22:52
  • Just to be clear, "Community" is a bot (which I didn't know about after a year on SO). See meta.stackexchange.com/q/6981/147362. Hence my tag, robots.
    – Joseph Quinsey
    Commented Mar 1, 2012 at 22:52
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    @Joseph: While that is true, Community didn't do anything but take credit for the rejection. The other user clicked the Improve button, made other edits, and said "this suggested edit should be rejected." While his name does not appear there, he technically did reject your edit.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Mar 1, 2012 at 22:57
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    @animuson: Do you mean the OP rejected my edits? If so, that would be his/her prerogative. And if so, why invoke "Community"?
    – Joseph Quinsey
    Commented Mar 1, 2012 at 23:02
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    @Joseph: If you looked at the revision link in the first comment, you'd see that Peter O made the revision that rejected yours. I don't know why they used Community as the sole-rejecter. It makes no sense to me, but that's how they chose to do it. We can't know why that person chose to mark your edit as unhelpful because we can't add reject reasons inside the improve screen.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Mar 1, 2012 at 23:05
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    @JosephQuinsey - the OP didn't reject your edits - another reviewer did.
    – ChrisF Mod
    Commented Mar 1, 2012 at 23:05
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    @animuson true, looks like it's Peter O. who most likely unchecked the checkbox by mistake as he didn't change much in the suggestion.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Mar 1, 2012 at 23:06
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    @Sha, Dow, Wiz and others: I doubt Peter O. even knew there was a suggested edit; this smells like an unnoticed edit collision instead. (See my answer.)
    – Arjan
    Commented Mar 1, 2012 at 23:35
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    @animuson, Sha: Actually, it's likely that the user who edited did it at the same time and was unaware of Joseph's suggested edit. In this case, the edit that doesn't need approval silently trumps the suggested edit. Arjan's answer nails it.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Mar 1, 2012 at 23:36
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    @Arjan: Yes, I was unaware too.
    – Peter O.
    Commented Mar 1, 2012 at 23:46
  • @Cody, isn't that question about edits (made by anonymous users), not about approving/rejecting?
    – Arjan
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 6:28
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    To be precise, Community isn't really a bot. It's merely the "user" who gets assigned to actions that don't belong to a real user.
    – balpha StaffMod
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 16:27
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    @balpha It's easy to think of Community as a bot, because of the script that causes Community to bump old posts.
    – Powerlord
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 19:48

3 Answers 3

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I can understand why you would be upset -- despite what you said, you did more than just address the shouting. It looks like you improved multiple facets of the post:

  • removed noise from title
  • formatting into lists (twice)
  • imrpoved font sizes
  • formatted code
  • fixed some typos
  • and, of course, removed some shouting

There were still a few things that could have been addressed:

  • more typos and grammar problems
  • weak title
  • a bit of shouting
  • minor punctuation

But not so many that it should have been rejected.

It's worth noting that the current revision still kind of sucks, and actually doesn't have a lot of the improvements that you suggested:

  • title wasn't improved
  • code not formatted
  • still some shouting
  • no code formatting
  • spelling & grammar not that great

That's definitely frustrating.

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Despite the comments to your question: I doubt any reviewer rejected your edit, or tried to improve it. I think it's just a matter of an edit collision that was unnoticed.

You edited at 21.14:17 (hover your mouse over "2 hours ago" to see that). Another edit that actually came through was posted on 21.15:26. I'm quite sure the editor did not know about your suggested edit, and loaded the page before you posted your suggestion, and maybe even started editing before you posted.

It's happened to me too, being the other editor; see https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/88186/collision-detection-fails-when-saving-while-suggested-edits-are-pending

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  • +1 For your link about Collision Detection. I was mislead by monicker "Community", and jumped to erroneous conclusions about a mythical SO bot.
    – Joseph Quinsey
    Commented Mar 1, 2012 at 23:39
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    The only bot we have around here goes by the name Jon Skeet.
    – Cody Gray
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 2:31
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EDIT: removed original first paragraph, I missed the point and Arjan nailed it.

But to answer you, no, there is no "appeal" mechanism. Well, other than coming here to ask, and then hoping someone goes ahead and makes the edit, but that's not really something you should be doing every time, as you probably realize.

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