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I just saw one edit suggestion that had 5 reviewers: two said it is too minor, three approved it.

It is funny to see that it is when one suggestion is declined with "Too minor" that ends up involving way more people to see if it is worth approving or not.

What could be improved in the system to stop this anti intuitive behaviour?

Edit: my point is not against democracy (obvious!), but to the fact that "edit too minor" I guess it is used to indicate that "we should not bother reviewers with such small thing" that ends up involving "way more reviewers than in a normal suggestion".

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  • Well, if you ask me, the two rejecters were right. Maybe the problem is that the "too minor" reason for rejection doesn't have enough consensus to be applied in a consistent and noncontroversial way by a minimum number of reviewers.
    – Daniel Daranas
    May 8, 2013 at 9:24
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    What's the problem here? The edit was reviewed, a decision was taken (unfortunately the wrong one, but hey, it's not perfect), so what is the problem?
    – Bart
    May 8, 2013 at 9:25
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    If they had 500 rep then they could have just used the retag option. However, there were other improvements possible in that post and they should have been made along with adding the tag.
    – Ren
    May 8, 2013 at 9:27
  • @Bart The "anti intuitive behaviour", I think, is that we don't "want" to spend time reviewing minor edits yet rejecting an edit as minor requires time from reviewers to reject it. The time is longer if three reviewers insist in actually accepting it, for a total of five reviewers involved (three wrong, two right).
    – Daniel Daranas
    May 8, 2013 at 9:28
  • @Ren Your assumption is incorrect, LINQ is supported by C#, F#, VB.NET and Java. As such the edit is acceptable on its own, but yes more could've been improved. As such both outcomes have their merits.
    – Niels Keurentjes
    May 8, 2013 at 9:30
  • @Niels yeah, I had a quick Google and removed that part of my comment :)
    – Ren
    May 8, 2013 at 9:30
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    @fedorqui if a user keeps making minor edits and they keep being rejected, then they will be banned from suggesting edits for a while. The length of the ban will be smaller to begin with but if they are banned again, that period of time increases. Seems to be a decent way of dealing with this issue.
    – Ren
    May 8, 2013 at 9:34
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    @Ren Besides, the mere fact of the user getting one edit rejected, and learning from this, will also deal with this issue. Most users will learn that their suggested edits shouldn't be minor after their first minor edit gets rejected.
    – Daniel Daranas
    May 8, 2013 at 9:37
  • @DanielDaranas true also :)
    – Ren
    May 8, 2013 at 9:38
  • Flagged as no longer reproduced because only three people can possibly review a single edit suggestion nowadays.
    – Stormblessed
    Sep 8, 2019 at 19:30

1 Answer 1

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Before you consider fixing 'the system', pause for a second to consider the age old adagium "if it isn't broken, don't fix it". What you see there is showing exactly why the moderation system works, and the community moderation principle at its best by expressing their opinions through voting.

In this case, I myself agree with both the too minor votes and the accept votes. In this case, the accept won. This effectively means a majority of the community currently considers a change like this acceptable, and the community will eventually adapt in either of the two directions.

Democracy works like that - it's not the cases where everyone agrees on that get all the attention, laws that have a majority support pass through all parliaments in no time. It's the fringe cases where discussion is possible and there's no clear majority that take up all the discussion. Same principle goes here - when there's no clear majority, more voters are invited. It's democracy at its best, so why consider it a problem.

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  • You can't fully agree with both the reject and the approve votes. Ultimately a decision has to be made, and the two are mutually exclusive. You can of course see reasons supporting both alternatives, but not agree with both of them 100%.
    – Daniel Daranas
    May 8, 2013 at 9:30
  • I can most certainly agree with both. In this case I would've opted for reject because I think it would be the better vote, but that doesn't mean by definition I disagree with people who'd accept it.
    – Niels Keurentjes
    May 8, 2013 at 9:32
  • Of course democracy blabla, but you are not focusing my point: If "edit too minor" is used to indicate that "we should not bother reviewers with such small thing", there is a problem if that ends up involving "way more reviewers than in a normal suggestion".
    – fedorqui 'SO stop harming'
    May 8, 2013 at 9:47
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    @fedorqui You are wrong. It's not the "edit too minor" rejection votes that generates this. It's the disagreement among different reviewers.
    – Daniel Daranas
    May 8, 2013 at 9:50
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    I'm focusing exactly on that point, since that is the fundamental point of democracy as I'm arguing here. If there's obvious consensus, a few reviewers suffice. If there's none, it makes sense to ask more people's opinions on it. In the end either the users will learn to make more substantial edits, or the reviewers will learn to accept that the community wants to make these smaller edits. The fringe cases are exactly the ones that need more attention from more reviewers. It's the disagreement that matters, not the actual vote or the case.
    – Niels Keurentjes
    May 8, 2013 at 9:50
  • @fedorqui In other words, the same situation would have happened if the two rejection votes were for another reason. You are putting a wrong focus on the rejection reason. The real cause of more reviewers being involved is the subject of Niels's answer.
    – Daniel Daranas
    May 8, 2013 at 9:52
  • But @DanielDaranas, I perfectly know how the reviewing method works, I do not need explanation of it. What I say is that the "too minor edit" system is leading to bother way more people than normal.
    – fedorqui 'SO stop harming'
    May 8, 2013 at 9:55
  • @fedorqui You are not listening.
    – Daniel Daranas
    May 8, 2013 at 9:56
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    @fedorqui The point is that the user submitting the edits would learn from the rejection and won't make them again. That should limit the amount of times he would make such minor edits, thereby largely solving the problem.
    – Bart
    May 8, 2013 at 10:44
  • OK I see, @Bart. So it can lead to the suggestion of "If you think it is too minor, it is better to mark it as 'too minor' and improve it, so the person suggesting will learn it".
    – fedorqui 'SO stop harming'
    May 8, 2013 at 11:18
  • @Bart: that's an awesome theory, but in practice most edits that should be rejected as too minor probably get robo-approved, teaching users to keep making them.
    – Wooble
    May 8, 2013 at 11:40
  • @Wooble If this happens in reality, a separate question could be created in Meta stating that too many small suggested edits are approved.
    – Daniel Daranas
    May 8, 2013 at 11:46
  • @Wooble Then those reviewers are creating their own work, I'd say. Instead of worrying about bothering the reviewers, we should bother the reviewers to actually do an appropriate job.
    – Bart
    May 8, 2013 at 12:05

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