Decision on rejected edits should be displayed as a notification to the editor

Question

Update, April 2014: I fully support Shog9's proposal of adding the message where it belongs—in the actual editing form. This is less intrusive than displaying it as a notification, but it serves the same purpose. Can has?

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Background

When you suggest an edit, the outcome of whether it was approved or rejected is buried deep within your profile. You have to navigate to Profile » Activity » Suggestions to find a list of your recent edits, but even those do not say anything about the outcome:

waffles♦ introduced this to "facilitate learning", but what can I learn from this page? I have to manually click through the edits to see whether they were rejected or not. This is time-consuming or inefficient at best. There's also no learning involved at all, since there is no active feedback.

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Feature request #1

If an edit was rejected, there should be a notification message displayed, linking to the page of the suggested edit (which states the reject reason).

This kind of feedback would improve the editing behavior, since otherwise, inappropriate suggestions might just continue.

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Feature request #2

If the above is too intrusive, the messages in the profile's Activity section should be clearer, for example like this (compare against the first screenshot in the question):

This is similar to: Improving how suggested edits are displayed in your activity history

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Here's some more explanation:

Let's assume the case of a user suggesting lots of edits that are in some way harmful. Maybe they were too minor, like only changing keyboard shortcuts to use kbd markup instead of boldface.

Yes, we've already had this on Super User. Since it only takes one user to approve / reject there, some of these edits might even have been wrongfully accepted, others rejected. While this is a problem of its own, the user suggesting these edits will have a hard time even getting any kind of feedback.

They would never see the rejection messages because they're buried somewhere, unless they critically checked each suggestion in their profile. I doubt anybody would do this. Even more so, they might only look at their steadily climbing reputation, not really noticing a rejected edit.

Another case is users learning how to edit. How are we going to guide them if they're not told what they did wrong? They will just continue suggesting edits until somebody actually pings them in chat or comments somewhere.

Here's an example of a user who was completely unaware that he could see feedback somewhere in a dark corner of his profile, until he was banned from editing because he'd repeated the same mistake over and over.

Answer 1

Kevin implemented this as described below. One rejected edit will produce the following warning:

That links back to the last edit that was rejected. If the editor never gets any edits approved, they'll see this every time they go to edit, until they're banned. If some are approved but many are rejected (see details below), they'll get a more noticeable warning:

...Which links to /users/current?tab=activity&sort=suggestions. We're not currently indicating whether these have been approved or rejected on that page. UPDATE (December 10, 2014): We now show suggested edit outcomes on that page (pending, approved, or rejected).

Finally, there's an in-between warning that'll appear for folks who get most of their edits approved but have a few declines (see below for details):

Again, this links to the viewer's suggested edit history, and should allow conscientious editors to find past edits even when their most recent edit was approved.

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I like this idea, but I also agree with Jeff's concerns that this is the wrong way to be using notifications. In particular, if we're notifying you of stuff that doesn't encourage you and that you can't do anything about, it's unlikely to have a positive effect.

I think the right way to expose these rejections is to put them where they matter most: on the edit form itself, the next time you go to make an edit!

Proposal: edit form warnings

Here's the default message that a low-rep user sees when suggesting an edit:

There's a constant within the system that determines a minimum number of edits that must be made in a week before editors are eligible for a ban due to rejected edits. We'll refer to it here as RejectionsTillBanned (note that approved edits effectively increase this somewhat, but let's ignore that for now).

When # of edits by the current editor in the past week is less than RejectionsTillBanned

...then the system looks only at the last edit reviewed when determining whether or not to warn.

• If that edit was approved, no warning is given - the default message is shown.

• If that edit was rejected, the following message is appended to the default:

  Attention! Your last edit was rejected. While reasonable edits may be rejected for many reasons outside of your control, you should review the reasons given for rejecting it before continuing.

When # of edits by the current editor in the past week is >= to RejectionsTillBanned

...then the system will calculate the following value, considering all edits suggested and reviewed in the past week except for those rejected by Community: Rejected - Approved/3

• If the result is >= 1 then the following message is appended to the default:

  Attention! Some of your previous edits were rejected. While reasonable edits may be rejected for many reasons outside of your control, you should review your recently-rejected edits before continuing.

• If the result is >= 3 then the following message is appended to the default:

  Warning! Some of your previous edits were rejected. Please review your recently-rejected edits before continuing. Too many rejected edits may cause your editing privileges to be suspended.

Displaying the outcome of the edit on the activity list

UPDATE (December 10, 2014): We now show suggested edit outcomes in the activity list. Original text follows:

In order for this proposal to be effective for prolific editors, it's essential that they're able to quickly identify which edits have been rejected. slhck's second suggestion is a good one, but his mockup breaks the ability to quickly scan the list when not filtering. So I'm proposing a slight variation on that:

Pretty easy to pick out the outliers there now, eh?

Expectations

For users whose last edit (or edits) have been rejected, they get that warning and a link to information on why. But not in their inbox, not as a notification, not as an interruption to something else they might have been doing - as a context-sensitive warning that they're about to do something they've been unsuccessful at in the past. If there's something they can learn from the rejection reasons, this is the time for them to learn it.

Answer 2

I don't agree with a banner appearing every time one of your edits is rejected, but I could get behind one of the following alternatives.

1. Update Profile » Activity » Suggestions to show which edits were accepted and which were rejected without forcing the user to manually click on each one. I prefer this solution because it is unobtrusive and makes the Suggestions tab more useful, in my opinion.

   

2. Show a new message in the user's inbox for each rejected edit. I don't really like this solution because it is a bit intrusive, but it's definitely better than a banner.

In general, I agree with Jeff that positive feedback is better than negative feedback. That being said, any feedback at all is better than none.

Answer 3

Why is everyone saying that bad things can't appear in notifications?

I'll give you two scenarios:

1. I am a vandal. I make spam edits on a load of tag wikis. The edits get rejected and I get told why. I would ignore them. This scenario is null. Nothing would change either way.

2. (This recently happened to me) I am a good faith editor. I edit, but do something wrong (provide too simple info or something). I get told what is wrong, so I change my behavior and all is good. This is the real thing. Without the warnings, the editor would get blocked, because he does not know what he is doing wrong, and would naïvely carry on. With the warnings, he can become a better editor.

How can these notifications do any harm? All they will do is stop users like me getting blocked when they were editing in good faith.

Answer 4

I asked a similar question - see Also show rejection vote reasons for accepted suggested edits - that has been closed as a duplicate of this one.

It was not en exact duplicate: what happened to me was that my edit was actually accepted, but there was one reject vote with a useful comment. I think that in such a case the chances of missing the comment are even higher that if the edit was actually rejected: I had no reason to go and dig up the comment.

My vote would be to have a notification in the inbox with the comment.

There are ways to criticize something without saying 'you suck' - altough probably as techies we are not very good at that.

Answer 5

I understand the desire to educate, but there's something deeply wrong about the proposed design.

The net effect is the user seeing this broadcast in their face in the most obtrusive way we can:

You've done something wrong. Click here to learn why you suck.

You should only send the user obtrusive 'in-your-face' messages about how awesome they are.

Messages about non-awesomeness should always be delivered quietly, via a backchannel, in a way that minimizes their impact. Otherwise, we're slapping them in the face.

Answer 6

The new notification system has successfully reduced the amount of noise from items that are not actionable, such as privilege changes, badge awards, and so forth. These notifications appear in the top left menu, not just for one site, but for every site on the network. As a result, notifications are less noisy but more visible, since Stack Exchange can push notifications to me for Site A even though I am on Site B.

Problems with using notifications:

Adding suggested edit results to this notification box creates two problems:

• It significantly increases the amount of noise based on the number of rejected edits.
• It doesn't match Jeff's goal of not saying "YOU SUCK" in the notification section.

While we definitely want to help people improve their edits, we don't want to change the positive tone of the notifications system. Right now, Stack Exchange only sends positive reinforcing messages that are intended to increase the frequency of a specific set of behaviors, and we should ensure that it stays that way.

In other words, even though these notifications aren't as "loud", we still don't want them to have negative connotations.

Use "Helpful Flags" as a template:

With that said, let's use the helpful flags statistics as a template for how to approach this problem. When I flag a post, I'm never told how much I suck because I flagged a post incorrectly. However, at a glance, my profile does show how helpful I've been. If I click on the helpful flag value, I see a list of all of my flags, as well as the detailed results.

If a flag is declined. I see the message from the moderator explaining why. Again, this information is never pushed and is something I must explicitly look for.

If we take this same approach with suggested edits, we have something similar to what appears in this User Profile mockup. See the "Stats" section at the bottom of the User Information section:

User Profile Helpful Edits:

In this example, there are 19 helpful edits which the community approved. Again, the information is positive and reinforcing.

If I click on the helpful edit value, I'm taken to a helpful edits detail page. This page resembles the helpful flag detail page. On this page, I see every edit I've made, in chronological order, and the results of each suggested edit. See attached mockup for a visual representation of what this feature would look like:

Proposed Helpful Edits Detail Page:

In this detail page, I can review my suggested edits and take action in my next set of edits to ensure they're most helpful. In this example, one of my edits was rejected because I only tried editing the tags and nothing else. It was rejected for being too minor and because there is an "edit tags" link that I can use to change the tag, assuming I have enough reputation to do so.

In summary, this solution balances positive, reinforcing messages with low notification noise while still making it easy for a user to review his or her suggested edit history.

Answer 7

I think it's important to show this feedback not only to users who are suggesting edits, but also to reviewers who are approving and rejecting them.

At the same time, I agree with Jeff that the banner system is for "wow, you're awesome" messages only.

In regards to the feedback, if I were spending my valuable time suggesting edits, only to find out weeks or months later that they all were rejected because I was doing something wrong that I actually thought was helpful, I would surely want to know. While I agree with Jeff in that we don't want to flash banners, there should in fact be a very easy-to-get-to method of seeing the results of suggested edits and reviews, similar to how I can see why a flag may have been declined by a moderator.

Not making this information easily available shows disrespect to the people trying to help in assuming that we'll be offended by being shown or guided into doing it the right way.

Perhaps a modified version of Chris Frederick's suggestion where I click a "suggested edit results" section, similar to the "review" section. This wouldn't be mixed in with my normal question, answer, comment activity, but it would be available for me to review should I feel the need to.

As for reviewers, when I first started reviewing edits, I was approving tag edits, not realizing users without full edit privileges could simply click a "retag" link that disappears once you get full edit permissions at 2000 reputation. I later learned in a meta post that this was incorrect and that I should have rejected those edits. Meanwhile, I thought the people rejecting those edits were being ridiculous because I had no way to tell why they chose to reject.

Today, I see some rejections for edits that should not be rejected, perhaps due to the same ignorance now experienced by another new reviewer.

With the current system, it's not possible to help guide these users, both the ones making the edits and the ones approving and rejecting. I am for giving the feedback to those users who are interested and simply making it available for the ones who simply make suggestions without caring about the result.

Answer 8

I think a notification (in addition to the suggestions view showing the approval status) would be helpful. But not one for every edit, but more a summary à la

Of your 17 recent suggested edits, 12 were approved

There may still be the unpleasant experience of "none were accepted", but if that really happens often said user should really consider their editing skills. In that case a helpful link to a "What is a good edit?" faq post might be helpful.

Answer 9

In the mean-time, it is just about possible to get a list of your rejected edits (more easily than clicking through Every. Single. Edit. on one's profile to check, that is) using StackExchange data explorer and a query something like this:

SELECT 
   *
FROM SuggestedEdits WHERE RejectionDate is not null AND OwnerUserId = MY_ID

(where MY_ID is your SO user ID).

An example showing my rejected edit.

Answer 10

Yes... no.

Admittedly, it is inefficient. However, in the end, edits aren't all that relevant. They don't benefit you a whole lot, they just benefit the community.

Here's the main problem however: if this was implemented, there would be hordes of people who would say things like what BoltClocks suggested. Although I'm not against the idea itself, it (at least seems like it) would lead to useless notification ideas like:

• Let's notify people when someone replies the comment replying to their comment!
• Let's notify people when someone posts another answer on a question they also answered!
• Let's notify people so that they know stack overflow is broken!
• etc, etc.

Although I myself would like this, it would contribute to the notification spam that I'm always getting. So please, please, Keep it simple, (not so) stupid.