Rejected edits should have consequences

Question

One of the special things that makes Stack Exchange different from sites like Reddit or countless discussion forums is the ability of anyone (with a minimum of rep) to suggest improvements to any post. And many do. But occasionally, whether simply due to ignorance or to deliberately game the system, some users suggest edits that don't really improve the post being edited.

Fortunately, we do have a review system that usually — though, alas, not always — catches such mistakes. But when it does... nothing happens. The edit just disappears, vanishing into the dusty bowels of the system.

This has two harmful consequences:

1. Users who make poor edits by mistake or from ignorance get no feedback, and so never learn to make better edits.

   At best, those users may notice that the post they tried to edit hasn't changed, or that they didn't receive the expected +2 rep (if they know about that). But since there's no message of any kind telling them that their edit was rejected, they may assume that it was simply a random software glitch and keep trying to make the edit again until a) they give up in frustration, b) the edit gets approved by mistake, or c) a frustrated reviewer contacts them personally to tell them to stop it. I've been that reviewer several times.

2. For users who try to game the system, there's no disincentive to making a huge number of crap edits (like, say, adding random backticks to posts) in the hope that some of them will stick. This wastes reviewer time, and may degrade the quality of the site if some of the edits get incorrectly approved.

To fix both of these problems, I'd like to propose the following feature:

Make rejected edits give -1 rep to the user who suggested them.

In particular, this rep loss should be reported in the same way as rep loss from downvotes is currently reported, and the report entry should link to the rejected edit suggestion (/review/suggested-edits/number), or (better yet) to a new page that would list the reasons given for the rejection, and would also provide additional advice on how to make better edits and what to do if one disagrees with the rejection.

A -1 rep penalty on rejected edits would not actually have much direct effect on anyone's rep score; a "robo-editor" could still break even, as long as at least 34% of their edits were good enough to be accepted. But to editors who are not completely cynical, it would create a powerful psychological feedback effect, encouraging them to find out why their edit was rejected and to adjust their editing habits to minimize rejections.

Perhaps more importantly, however, for many new editors, the mere fact that the rejection was reported at all in the achievements drop-down would be a great help. By tying the notification to a rep change, it would fit neatly into the existing Stack Exchange notification system, while linking it to the review page would, for the first time, actually let editors see the feedback provided by reviewers.

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Ps. In case you think this suggestions would be too harsh and likely to discourage even useful edits, I wouldn't object to simultaneously increasing the rep rewards for accepted edits to, say, +3 or even +5 rep. The latter option would make the rep changes from suggested edits equivalent to those from question up/downvotes, and ought to encourage more good edits.

Also, obviously, I'm not suggesting that a change like this be made simply by jumping into the deep end and hoping for the best. Rather, it should be e.g. first rolled out on a subset of the SE sites for, say, a one-month trial period to see what the effect would be. If, as I hope, this change would decrease the number of poor edits and increase the number of good ones, it could then be more widely deployed; if not, it could always be rolled back.

^{Pps. Yes, I'm aware that both parts of this feature request (rep penalty and notification) have been suggested before. I don't think the combination has been, though, even if, in hindsight at least, it's kind of obvious.}

Answer 1

Rejected edits do have a consequence; sufficient bad edits will land you with an edit ban.

However feedback is always a good thing and I would support increased feedback. Expecially as failed reviewers cannot be @replied to to give manual feedback directly on the edited post itself.

However, a rep penalty may have the opposite effect to what you hope. If a rejected edit means -1 an edit reviewer may be more kind to mediocre posts and skip rather than reject (leaving the robo reviewers to approve)

Answer 2

I like the idea (I actually made a post on the very same subject myself a few days ago), but penalizing them with reputation subtraction is not a good idea.

I can see several issues with that:

• Incorrect judgement by the community subtracts reputation when it shouldn't (with the amount of poor reviewers, this is a real issue).
• As Richard remarks: friendly reviewers will go out of their way to prevent a reject, leaving robo-reviewers free play.
• Inflated reputation: if you give +3 or +5 rep for accepted edits the overall worth of reputation is going down since it's a lot easier to receive reputation.

What instead should happen is some sort of warning system. When users are getting their edits rejected too much they should (gradually) receive warnings AND positive notifications when they're heading back the right direction.

I have seen the argument about displaying negative notifications, but at that point we should ask ourselves the question: do we really want to do nothing when their decisions are affecting the community negatively? It might not be severe, but a friendly warning message isn't that intruding either.

This will allow users to revise their editing behaviour earlier on instead of just getting an edit ban out of nowhere without any indication why. Likewise adding the positive notifications will reinforce their behaviour and in its turn provide feedback that they're doing better.

What's key here is feedback: there should be a system that allows you an overview of your edits (both for reviewers and proposers) on a regular basis where you can review your decisions. They can serve as a tool for people to learn from, possibly with a few links to relevant meta posts for each rejection reason as further explanation.

Answer 3

In the position of Stack Exchange, you don't want the user to have negative feedback. In the words of Jeff:

I understand the desire to educate, but there's something deeply wrong about the proposed design.

The net effect is the user seeing this broadcast in their face in the most obtrusive way we can:

You've done something wrong. Click here to learn why you suck.

You should only send the user obtrusive 'in-your-face' messages about how awesome they are.

Messages about non-awesomeness should always be delivered quietly, via a backchannel, in a way that minimizes their impact. Otherwise, we're slapping them in the face.

And I agree with him. Sure, something needs to be done to tell people if they're messing up. But for one edit rejection I think it's unnecessary. Maybe we could have a notification displayed to the user if x number of edits are rejected, somehow, but unobtrusively. Otherwise, it's too much in a person's face that they messed up.

In regards to your second point on rep-loss, that, I think, would have a negative effect on a user. It also would make people second-guess Rejecting an edit, since it is removing rep from a user. It makes people less likely to edit posts, given the fact that they have to second-guess the edit they're going to make.

I would suggest making a system in which users who've had a percentage of edits rejected (say 70% of 10, or something like that) be warned about this. Maybe there could be an extra pop-up shown when they are editing, or, possibly even editing suspensions. However, I don't think that rep-loss and the in-your-face notifications are good to tell a user about their bad edits.