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This edit suggestion was approved by a user with 44K reputation. If he had clicked the link, he would have realised that the link actually led to a pornographic site.

The suggested edit was done by a user who has since been banned for posting the same link in an answer of his own, on the same question.

This obviously shows that this user was not paying attention to the suggested edit and just clicked "Approve".

So yea, can we all just be aware that stuff like this happens, and we really should look closely at suggested edits. I understand that an average user probably can't tell whether a link was actually improved, if they have no experience in that topic, so then they should at least skip the review. But as this link was blatantly pornography, this shouldn't be a hard one.

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  • good catch and thank you for the timely heads up
    – user234239
    Commented Dec 4, 2013 at 2:54
  • According to the page you just linked, the suggestion was rejected, not approved.
    – user102937
    Commented Dec 4, 2013 at 3:14
  • 7
    @TheGrinch look where it says p.s.w.g and approve
    – scrblnrd3
    Commented Dec 4, 2013 at 3:16
  • @TheGrinch I rejected it, then I checked the edit suggestion again, and I saw another user approve the edit. It's underneath mine (so that would ean he did it earlier than me, right?)
    – TerryA
    Commented Dec 4, 2013 at 3:17
  • 2
    How 'bout that? The system works.
    – user102937
    Commented Dec 4, 2013 at 3:18
  • 1
    I was about to reject that as vandalism, but by the time I had clicked "reject", you had already rejected it. :) Commented Dec 4, 2013 at 3:45

1 Answer 1

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EDIT: Maybe we could add in a new review type, a link changing review type. Also, maybe one thing that the devs could add is a tooltip showing where URL shortening links lead.

This is the very purpose of review audits. For those who don't know, if I understand correctly, review audits are fake audits generated that are blatantly obvious rejects, and if a user approves them, they are greeted with a very angry message. While edits like this will get posted and approved, we can just hope that the rest of the community is observant enough to stop these edits, and roll them back to previous states. Also, the topic of Banning URL Shorteners has been brought up many times, and declined.

Also, in this case, the edit was removed, so the system works, although there may be a few edge cases of people approving blatantly wrong things, but given time, bad posts will work their way to oblivion.

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  • 2
    Interesting topic, thanks for the link :)
    – TerryA
    Commented Dec 4, 2013 at 3:00
  • Yup; and it's also the reason it takes three to approve/reject.
    – Andrew Barber Mod
    Commented Dec 4, 2013 at 3:41
  • 4
    This suggests a type of review audit I haven't seen before: one that turns a link into an invalid link (perhaps a URL shortener that directs to a LOLcat or something), with the edit message "Fixed link." I'm not sure I've seen review audits that would specifically make sure people checked links. Commented Dec 4, 2013 at 5:12
  • @David: Maybe we could find a better destination. I would never give you up, but I don't think "LOLCatRoll" sounds quite right. Commented Dec 4, 2013 at 6:47

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