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Yesterday I was reviewing some edits and came across this user who was changing all occurrences of "pain in the ass" on stackoverflow to something like "difficult".

I think I reviewed 3 or 4 of these edits, some in questions already 4 years old. I must say I found this a waste of time and would rather review edits that improve posts content-wise.

My question is: should we encourage this kind of edits, or should we just reject these (assuming that the user will give up eventually in case all edits are rejected)?

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  • 5
    Such edits are really a pain in the ass. – yannis May 17 '13 at 10:00
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    You're not the first to notice it: Mass-editing existing answers with a similar pattern – Bart May 17 '13 at 10:00
  • @Bart ok thanks, I searched, but couldn't find related questions :) – Heuster May 17 '13 at 10:03
  • @Heuster Just search for "pain in the ass" ;) No worries, I spend too much time here, so I saw that one. – Bart May 17 '13 at 10:04
  • "pain in the ass" - 483 results, pita - 1470 results. I'd say too trivial to approve. – Rob W May 17 '13 at 10:07
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    @RobW What is your problem with flatbread? – Bart May 17 '13 at 10:09
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Reject as too minor. Or improve (fix other things) and mark as not helpful.

Suggested edits should fix everything that can be fixed (and it's quite rare that there isn't anything else to fix or add). When you make a suggested edit, you're using up the time of three or more other users to get it approved. One should thus make substantial (not radical) edits while suggesting; and similarly we should not encourage minor edits.

Also "pain in the ass" isn't that offensive either -- I can understand the F word being removed.

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    "I can understand the F word being removed", yeah that really is a terrible show. – George Duckett May 17 '13 at 10:32
  • Ok, thanks. I can agree with every part of this answer. I mainly wanted to verify if my opinion was in line with the common view, which seems to be the case :) – Heuster May 17 '13 at 11:28

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