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I have spent considerable time reviewing suggested edits. Less so lately, mainly because of the brokenness around improving, but more and more because those !*#^)(@^&#)@ audits are getting on my nerves.

Now I've raised my share of complaints about bad reviewers, so I'm willing to admit that audits are a necessary evil. But please don't make them such a burden on the people who don't need them.

  1. Do not show positive feedback about edit reviews, or at least not more than once. Rejecting an audit is more work than rejecting a normal bad suggestion, because of that extra click to dismiss the “yay you passed have a cookie” message. I don't need to be told, suggested edit audits are blatantly obvious anyway.
  2. Stop showing review audits altogether after 1000 reviews in that category (i.e. the Steward badge). If we continue beyond that point, we're clearly here to help, not for the badge. And if we're still doing such a bad job that we would get caught by an audit, the audits are useless.
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    Honestly, if someone passed 100% of audits they could just stop showing them after, say, 20 passed.
    – slhck
    Commented Jun 2, 2013 at 18:44
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    @slhck That might not work against the badge gamers (and I know they exist, I've seen them at work).
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Jun 2, 2013 at 18:45
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    Just F5 the page when there's an audit and press next, it saves you one click! (On a more serious note, you are totally right it's really annoying, I personally like your second idea with the Steward badge)
    – Hugo Dozois
    Commented Jun 2, 2013 at 18:53
  • @Gilles True, maybe just show a few audits for those who already have the badges and then leave it altogether, as you suggested.
    – slhck
    Commented Jun 2, 2013 at 19:01
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    Presumably whether to do this should be left up to seeing how many failed audits there are among users with steward badges in reviews.
    – djechlin
    Commented Jun 2, 2013 at 20:05
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    3rd option that I think meets your requirements without removing any current information: Say “You passed” but in a non-modal way, i.e. no click is required to make it go away.
    – Kevin Reid
    Commented Jun 2, 2013 at 23:36
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    There have been a few users who continued robo-reviewing and failing audits after they received the Steward badge in a category, but they were rare and mostly came right after the audits were put into place. Now that they've been here for a while, people are getting caught well before they get to this badge, so I could see relaxing or removing the audits after you get to that point.
    – Brad Larson
    Commented Jun 3, 2013 at 16:18
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    Maybe the "audit passed" should be replaced by a simple small notification "oh yeah, that previous item was an audit, you passed" at the top of the next item already shown
    – Tobias Kienzler
    Commented Aug 16, 2013 at 8:54

2 Answers 2

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Implemented as described in Shog's answer, pushed out with build rev 2014.5.7.2223 on meta and 2014.5.7.1592 on sites, where audits are enabled. Happy reviewing!

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  1. We didn't show positive feedback on these initially, for more or less the reasons you state. It confused people.

  2. I don't think removing audits entirely is ever a good idea. That said, we could certainly show them less often for folks with a good track record... and more often for folks with a bad one. What do you think? Maybe,

    • 100% success rate for, say, the past 20 audits gets you at least 30 reviews before the next one,
    • Anything under 50% rolls the dice every review.
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    If they're shown more often for bad reviewers, it's probably also a good idea to not make them count towards badges.
    – Ry-
    Commented Jun 4, 2013 at 23:26
  • Failed audits don't count toward badges. If you're failing enough audits to put you at < 50% success, I don't think we need to worry about giving you unearned badges; you're probably spending more time waiting out review-bans than reviewing.
    – Shog9
    Commented Jun 4, 2013 at 23:30
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    “I don't think removing audits entirely is ever a good idea.” Why? At least for suggested edit reviews, where the audits are blatantly obvious and only target robo-reviewers, not bad reviewers. I get the feeling that audits have become a price to pay to get the privilege of reviewing, instead of a necessary evil to weed out the bad reviewers. Any fewer audits for reviewers who have proven not to be badge hunters will help. And please do fix the UI so that it's faster to dismiss audits than to act on regular items, not slower.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Jun 4, 2013 at 23:37
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    For starters I don't buy the idea that folks reviewing blindly are necessarily "badge hunters", @Gilles - that particular bit of folk wisdom never really held true (before audits, before review-bans, I was tracking folks who were blazing through the queues and who already had all the badges for the queues they were in). It's easy to get careless - maybe not for you, but certainly for others.
    – Shog9
    Commented Jun 5, 2013 at 0:03
  • @Shog9 Ok (I've never verified anyone to be badge-hunting in the review queue, but I have seen clear cases among editors (500 crappy edits in a few weeks, then zero in the next few months…)). Then audits are indeed somewhat useful, but at least they should be easy to dismiss.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Jun 5, 2013 at 0:10
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    re: point 1 - can we just have an informational message at the top of the next edit? One that doesn't require clicking OK? "That was an audit, you passed, here's the next edit to review"
    – Blorgbeard
    Commented Jun 5, 2013 at 1:17
  • I don't mind if I sometimes get an audit. So far I have passed them all. But when I get multiple audits in the same queue in less than an hour I get angry and loose the interest to continue. The past behavior should be part of the formula of when to audit.
    – some
    Commented Dec 28, 2013 at 7:27

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