17

It seems that when a user’s suggested edit gets rejected they can simply re-suggest it, and given the current state of affairs of the suggested review queue the suggested edit is quite likely to be approved (or if not this time, then it will almost certainly be approved if they are persistent).

As an example I saw the following suggested edit which was rejected, very shortly after I saw almost the exact same edit suggested again, this time it got two approvals.

Should there perhaps be some sort of delay until a user can suggest an edit after their suggestion was rejected for the same post? Perhaps a check can be made how large of a difference there is between the two suggestions (though I’m not sure it’s worth doing just for this, and a delay is probably sufficient)?

I do understand that a user should be able to re-suggest an edit after it was rejected, since after all perhaps they made a better suggestion after seeing that it was rejected, however in cases like these I don’t think that is what is happening.

I did see this old post saying that after some rejected edits a user cannot suggest any further edits until a week has passed, but as this is clearly not happening here I guess that may have changed since that post.

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  • This doesn't answer your question, but you can rollback when you do notice it. – durron597 Dec 5 '12 at 15:34
  • I realize that and I have done so in the past. In this particular case I don't think that it's an especially harmful edit, its basically too minor which shouldn't have been approved. – Jack Dec 5 '12 at 15:36
  • What strikes me about this particular example is that it has 3 reject, then 2 approve -> approve... mostly because two of the rejectors gave the wrong reason. – durron597 Dec 5 '12 at 15:38
  • @durron597: Sometimes that helps, sometimes it doesn't... one time a user proposed the same edit the fifth time after getting rolled back the first four times. He could have easily used the time to answer a question and get a single upvote from the reputation earned by suggesting that same edit and getting approved five times. – BoltClock's a Unicorn Dec 5 '12 at 15:40
  • Actually, both of those edits were rejected. – Pops Dec 5 '12 at 15:40
  • @PopularDemand looking back I see your right and that it actually had been rejected, for some reason I thought there were three approvals. At any rate this has happened before what struck me this time was that it was basically within a minute or two so that I saw it in the queue almost immediately after rejecting it. – Jack Dec 5 '12 at 15:44
  • I've seen this before myself, it's definitely a legitimate issue. I figured you just pasted in the wrong link or something. – Pops Dec 5 '12 at 15:45
  • @PopularDemand I edited my post to reflect that it wasn't actually approved, but I still think that it is a good example, especially given how soon afterwards the second edit was suggested, its just not as good an example as I originally thought it was... – Jack Dec 5 '12 at 15:48
  • 5
    my favorite resubmitted-rejected is this one. Comment is simply hilarious "...THAT'S HOW HITLER GOT TO POWER!" – gnat Dec 5 '12 at 15:58
  • @gnat Thanks for the laugh. – Jack Dec 5 '12 at 16:12
7

I think this problem points to the core of the review problem, especially in the suggested edit queue.

  1. You have the robo-approvers running wild approving anything to get the badges.
  2. You have inconsistent application of rules, where someone (whether a 2K user or a 10K user) doesn't understand the rules or decides that they don't like how the community interprets a specific rule and votes how he/she believes.
  3. SO now has over 18,000 2K members that can approve edits, and it is tough to get that many people on the same page.
  4. Other than rep, there are no other hurdles that need to be cross to be allowed to suggest edits or approve edits.
  5. Suggested editors do not always know where to get feedback on edits since there isn't an obvious location to check, so resubmitting is just a reaction to "why didn't I get my rep, maybe it was lost, i'll just resubmit it".

For #1 - This has been discussed to death, so I'm not going to go into it.

For #5 - I've talked about this before as well here and here. But I think this is part of the problem of resubmitted edits. The only way you are going to fix it is to make editors more aware of the rejections. Maybe it means saying "you suck" to the suggester every once in a while, and/or an immediate (but short term) ban with a link to a MSO post about how to edit.

For #2-#4, I think this is the core of the problem and maybe what should be targeted in trying to clean up the edit/review process. I see several possible (and some overlapping) solutions

  1. Raise the editing threshold to 3K or even higher (which I would hate since I am only just over 2K myself). My understanding is part of the reason it was dropped so low is the volume of edits became too much for the limited user base to handle, so now that there are 12,000 3K users, that is more than enough to approve edits.
  2. Add new barriers to entry into the edit review process. It is possible (and likely) someone can get to 2K just on asking questions or just answering, so they could be edit eligible without ever suggesting an edit or learning how editing works. Maybe you become eligible when you reach 2K (or whatever the threshold is), but you also have to earn the Strunk & White badge before you can actually approve or make edits without requiring approval.
  3. (added on edit) Some sort of approval scoring method to help control reviewers. Approvers with high scores might see their the review cap increased, and maybe low scorers will see their limits decreased or be subject to a ban.
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5

The first (and simple) thing to do is to provide more information to reviewers. When someone posts a suggested edit, if they have any previous rejected edits (or any edits for that matter) for that same post they should be linked to from the review page.

In many cases knowing that someone is re-submitting a rejected edit isn't always clear, and just knowing that there was a previously rejected edit tells me right off the bat, as a reviewer, to pay close attention because it is very likely to need to be rejected. It will allow me to see if it's the same suggestion, or if it fixed whatever problem caused it to be rejected. It will also point me to the opinions of previous reviewers, being able to see what rejection reasons they used.

The best part about doing this is that it's not only fairly easy to develop (I would assume) but there's no automated actions taken, so there's no risk of inadvertently harming any appropriate edits.

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-2

I agree with you, and I have yet to see a good method of blocking the re-suggests of rejections.

My Idea on Punishments for Rejected Edits

I propose, as a solution, that after a rejected edit, there would be a series of cooldowns:

  • 1 hour cooldown for suggesting an edit for the question that the edit was rejected on (to let people think about why it was denied, ask on Meta if it was close, and reorganize their edit).
  • A 30 minute (shorter than the question cooldown) cooldown on all edit suggestions (not too long, not too short).

Also, after several more rejections, add more time to the suggested edits, with possible costs to reputation after X number of rejected edits in a row within a week (or other appropriate time period) of eachother

Possible Cooldown of Suggested Edits:

  1. 30 Minutes (first offence)
  2. 2 Hours
  3. 6 Hours (-10 rep?)
  4. 12 Hours (-25 rep?)
  5. 24 Hours (-50 rep?)
  6. 1 week (-100 rep?)

If you think that the rep/timer should change, put your recommendation in the comments.

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  • 1
    Probably much too painful punishment (especially the rep). While robo-approvers are a bigger problem, inconsistent application of the editing rules is another, so I would be concerned about 3 reviewers unfairly rejecting an edit because they interpret the rules differently than others. Granted this is less likely now that 3 approvals/rejects are required, it is still something that could (and will) happen. – psubsee2003 Dec 5 '12 at 17:52
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    You're putting way too much blame on improper edits on the submitter. There is already a system in place such that if a number of edits are rejected that person is banned for suggesting edits for a period of time. As long as bad edits get rejected, that is really enough. The problem is ensuring that reviewers properly reject bad edits, not stopping people from suggesting them. Suggesting edits and having them rejected is one of the best ways of learning what are proper/improper edits, and having punishments for just a single bad suggestion, and major punishments for just a few, is wrong. – Servy Dec 5 '12 at 18:06
  • I suggested the reputation as an unlikely scenario, after having 3+ rejected edits in a row within 7 days of eachother, they lose 10 rep, equal to an upvote on an answer (really, 10 rep is nothing after you get 200+). – Azulflame Dec 6 '12 at 13:16
  • IMO, the problem with this solution is that it is always the suggester fault. If his edit were wrongfully rejected he will suffer a penalty when he shouldn't. – ForceMagic Mar 12 '14 at 15:35

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