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This is part 1 of a two-part suggestion. Part 2 is here.

Many borderline or bad suggested edits are still getting approved. At the moment, there is no good way to educate users who make bad reviews*. Reviewers and editors are never notified if their decisions are disputed, or when an approved edit gets rolled back.

As one step to help that, the previous decisions of other reviewers, including custom reject messages, should be shown right next to the edit being reviewed.

enter image description here

This would help reviewers get an idea what other users think. It would also incentivize writing a custom reject message because there's a chance somebody will actually read it.

The argument can be made that this would influence reviewers unduly; that every review is supposed to stand on its own without any external input. However, the benefit of showing the other decisions outweighs the negatives:

  • Some clueless reviewers will think twice if they see reject votes from experienced users.

  • seeing a lot of approve votes on a bad edit may aggravate inspire an experienced user to write a rejection message, helping educate new users.

also, it's not like Stack Overflow doesn't create plenty of bias when it comes to moderation decisions already - by showing downvotes and closevotes, for example.

This might be an easy change with great educational value.

* - One can post a comment underneath some SO contribution of the user to get their attention, but that is borderline stalking and should be used only in extreme cases. I also understand the team is firmly against any sort of punishment system for disagreeable reviews (like downvoting or flagging).

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  • 1
    In the land of suggested edits it's the realm of FRRITW
    – random
    Jan 11, 2014 at 16:30
  • @random lol, yeah
    – Pekka
    Jan 11, 2014 at 16:31
  • If an inappropriate edit is approved, shouldn't you just roll it back?
    – Matthew Lundberg
    Jan 11, 2014 at 16:32
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    @Matthew yes, but neither the editor nor the approvers ever hear of it and go on happily approving the next bad edit.
    – Pekka
    Jan 11, 2014 at 16:33
  • Your second part of the suggestion goes to the image you have below... :P I think this is what you want: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/215797/…
    – hichris123
    Jan 11, 2014 at 16:53
  • @hichris thx, fixed.
    – Pekka
    Jan 11, 2014 at 16:54
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    Won't this just lead to a lot of "I'll just vote the way other people voted" behaviour?
    – Krease
    Jan 11, 2014 at 18:25

2 Answers 2

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I don't know that that would help. You'd see other people's correct decisions, but also other people's incorrect decisions, with no way to tell.

If reviewers are expected to follow the decision of the previous reviewers, let's make the first reviewer's decision final from the start, we don't need to waste time with multiple reviews.

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Alternatives:

  • Switch the position of the Approve and Reject buttons when there is a rejection reason chosen

    Reject | Approve | Improve | Skip

  • Show the count of rejections made inside the Reject button

    Approve | Reject (2) | Improve | Skip

In both it may prompt the auto-approvers into seeing that the post they're going to accept as good is actually plagiarism, actually a comment, or whatever they're blinkered to when they click-click-click the Approve button all UTC day long.

Wikipedia and product page dumps into tag wikis, which this often affects, helps and improves nothing other than cascades of raining +2 from the rafters when reviewers wilfully ignore, or are blind to, when the suggested edit is bad.

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