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I came across this suggested edit which adds backticks to these words

  • XNA, WinForms (tool/API name)
  • C# (language name)
  • 550 FPS (a... number)

and changes nothing else in the post.

I thought it was an improper use of backticks (since I think backticks should be used for code-related things) so I rejected the suggested edit. I checked the final review decision and saw that 2 reviewers approved it.

So I have 2 questions regarding this:

  1. Is this suggested edit correct, and should it have been approved? In a sense, I'm asking if this is an acceptable usage of backticks.

  2. If it should be rejected, what should the rejection reason be?

    • "too minor"

      2 reviewers chose this. I disagree with this. I mean "too minor" should be used if the suggested edit is correct but too trivial. This is not the case here because the edit is not even correct in the first place.

    • "invalid edit"

      I think this would be better than "too minor", but I thought the description given is vague.

    • "custom"

      I chose this instead and said "edit shows abuse of backticks".

What does the community think?

|improve this question
  • 3
    I use custom reason "Invalid use of backticks. Please don't use them to highlight random key words". – Shadow9 Jul 17 '13 at 8:00
  • 4
    I suggest we add that as a proper select-able reason. It's would find a lot of use. – Joachim Sauer Jul 17 '13 at 8:25
  • @Gilles, Don't agree that this question is a duplicate. Yes they are (closely) related. But that question is a feature request about automating the banning of an edit given a certain characteristic (regardless of human evaluation of its propriety). This question is a discussion about how to handle (whether to approve/reject manually) a very particular example of an edit involving an incorrect usage of backticks. Just because two questions can have similar answer(s), it doesn't necessarily mean that they are duplicates. – Old Checkmark Jul 17 '13 at 14:09
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Is this suggested edit correct, and should it have been approved? In a sense, I'm asking if this is an acceptable usage of backticks.

No, this suggested edit is not correct and should be rejected. This is not an acceptable usage of backticks.

If it should be rejected, what should the rejection reason be?

Some reviewers might have used too minor as the reject reason because Thanks was not removed during the edit. However I think, custom reason edit shows abuse of backticks is better as compared to "too minor". I would have mentioned something like this invalid use of code markdown for non-code items.

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  • note that I've edited the question to elaborate on why I object to the use of "too minor" – Old Checkmark Jul 17 '13 at 7:44
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Is this suggested edit correct, and should it have been approved? In a sense, I'm asking if this is an acceptable usage of backticks.

No this suggested edit is not correct. It is just an abuse of backtick which is used to format code not language name or anything else.

If it should be rejected, what should the rejection reason be?

IMO since it is not correct edits it should be rejected as "invalid edit". Custom reason can also be used.

PS: Genuinely saying: when I was newer in this community I didn't know proper rules of editing. And I suggested some meaningless edits. I am still regret for that.

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6

  1. No, this edit is not correct, and you were right to reject it because of the incorrect backtick usage.

  2. I like your use of a custom reason.

    I don't know how many editors go back and check their review results, but I know I always did - and taking the time to write a specific reason instead of picking one of the (often too) generic ones provided can only help in educating the editors.

    I don't like to see Too Minor used as a reason here, because it implies that the edit is ok, when I strongly feel that it's not. If I had to pick a generic reason, I'd probably go with This edit is incorrect..., but that reason is combined with an attempt to reply or comment, which can be confusing as well.

In short, you're on the right track. Keep up the good reviews.

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I actually (finally) registered at meta to look for an answer to this, and a consensus on when backticks are improper. That exact question was what triggered my search (I clicked "Skip" at the time).

There seems to be an increasing amount of edits to add backticks to all kinds of non-code words (which is why I started to get confused about whether this had become the accepted norm), so the best way, I think, would be a custom reason to explain exactly why this is a problem - much more likely to make the editor understand the reasoning and not keep doing it.

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  • 1
    Those are all wrong. I have no idea why people suggest them, but there has been a rash of them recently. The consensus is that the only acceptable use of backticks is for actual snippets of code, or perhaps identifiers from code (e.g. variable names). Otherwise, they're inappropriate. Reject all such edits. – Cody Gray Jul 17 '13 at 12:40

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