Is 2000 Rep really needed to change one letter?

Question

I looked for this question on Meta Stack Overflow, and found the topic discussed but never really resolved.

Just saw this typo,

"...Has anyone every experienced this kind of debugging weirdness?..."

Where "every" should really be "ever".

I'm sure I've made that same mistake myself a thousand times, I wanted to help the guy look better and help future readers as well as the site in general.

Ooops! No No, you can't change one and only one letter.

So then, I can't help the guy and just take out the single letter "y" and make him (as well as the entire site) look a whole lot better and present his case a whole lot more clearly.

Typos and grammar blobs really distract from the content of any written material that anyone tries to present.

The clarity of Stack Overflow is one of the paragons of the place. Are { you, we, I } sure that we should require a full 2000 points on the reputation scale just to allow someone to make a single byte correction to a post?

I'm thinking, possibly through some sort of procedure where maybe it might include something like...

• The new member applies
• Goes through a few weeks' apprenticeship
• He demonstrates that he really is an okay human
• He shows that he truly understands English
• Others look over his little 1 and 2 character edits
• Those others confer on him some sort of status; confirmed, denied, delayed, limited, whatever

Perhaps the "limited" status might be something like 2 or 3 little cleanup edits per day or whatever.

If I had a dime for every time I read an internet post with improperly written it's its your you're there their they're (and I forget the rest) well, whatever.

Do we really want to require 2000 for something as simple as changing one letter that really helps?

Answer 1

Even for 2K users one-letter edits are discouraged.

In Defense of Editing which predates suggested edits

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. (Except when you happen to be editing that rare “perfect except for this one misspelled word” post. This is obviously OK to edit. In my experience, the type of posts that really cry out for editing need a lot of editing to be whipped into shape.)

With Suggested edits it's actually worse since not only is the question bumped on the home page if the edit goes through but there the additional opportunity cost associated with reviewing minor edits that are better served for reviews of substantial edits.

Answer 2

I agree that every little bit helps, and we should be encouraging more edits as much as we can.

While the main sites I edit on I have the 2k, there are some I don't and it's frustrating to not be able to fix those little aberrations.

As far as your idea goes, it seems a little too manual. I would just have them approved once they had a number of substantial edits approved, or maybe allow them to edit like a 2k if they already have 2k on another site.

Answer 3

Yes, small edits are discouraged, essentially due to a very strong opinion held by Jeff Atwood (which which I profoundly disagree). There has been extensive debate on this topic, which I've read, and failed to be convinced by any objective reasons. It seems to boil down to a matter of unjustified personal preference. On the other hand, Jeff made SE, so we should thank him for it, warts and all.