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There is a long standing ban on allowing suggested edits on per-site meta:

I would like this relaxed on beta sites to allow broader participation to help shape beta site meta posts.

I just ran into this on this post where I wanted to correct the list of sites that allow software recommendations. Wouldn't it make sense to allow edit suggestions on beta sites since restricting edits to +1k users on beta sites means an extremely limited group of people can even suggest a change to a post?

Here is the problem:

  1. Undocumented behavior. The about page says "Any user can propose edits, but not all edits are publicly visible immediately."
  2. Confusing behavior. Why are meta edits harder to moderate than site edits? Where else on SE does a control show dimmed out when you cannot even exercise that control? Shouldn't the edit text be hidden if no suggested edits are allowed?
  3. Reduces input. Anyone who reviews edits knows that some absolute gems come from anonymous and new editors. How is preventing edits making the meta site better for the users or the moderators? Restricting diversity is bad, especially if it's not for a clear and convincing reason. The only reason posted for this restriction characterizes the edit review queue as needing a 10k user to process (which isn't applicable anymore since 2k users review edits now site wide - 1k on beta sites). The argument that "yet another queue" seems out of place with the current design and this doesn't have to be another queue.
  4. Causes more work. If someone wants to edit a post on a beta meta, they have to:
    • (ab)use the comments like I did. (Which does discuss the question, but causes more work and noise for someone to do the edit rather than approve or deny the edit).
    • Flag it for a moderator to help. (Which presumably would be the last flag a moderator should be handling, but really - how many flags happen on beta meta sites?)
    • Go away and not edit a post on a site meta where you wanted to edit a post.

Proposed solution.

  1. Document the current behavior in the help pages site wide. If meta are special, say so clearly.
  2. This is subjective, but I believe we should strive for "making things as simple as possible but not simpler" What we have may have been good when the kinks were being worked out, but it's not simple enough IMO.
  3. Roll per site meta edits for beta sites into the main edit queue just as proposed on the request to change this site wide:

the ideal solution would be to just add the suggested edits on the meta to the queue on the main site. That way there would be no additional queue, and the meta sites would be editable by anyone like all the main sites

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  • There's also a related feature request: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129033/… (thanks for digging that one up, Random).
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Mar 3, 2014 at 3:46
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    I think calling it a "ban" at all is misleading, to be honest. A disabled feature is not the same thing at all as a ban (in the definition most commonly used around our sites). How would you address the issue of metas getting very low traffic? These proposed edits could sit in the queue for a very long time.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Mar 3, 2014 at 3:51
  • @AnnaLear Hopefully a little rhetoric won't harm the request. I like the post you thanked Random for. Also, how can I provide evidence for something that isn't implemented? I'm not sure what you are looking for. Do you have evidence that there is an actual problem the current design is solving? I think a lot of beta sites need more people to be involved and I think the SE way is to empower more people and the suggestions to solve a moderation queue problem are already at hand. I can't imagine meta being a moderation burden on any site other than SO/MSO which is about to be split asunder.
    – bmike
    Commented Mar 3, 2014 at 3:59
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    @anna would it be possible to have permeta sites edit go in the main site edit queue? For betas it would probably be the best thing
    – Hugo Dozois
    Commented Mar 3, 2014 at 4:01
  • Here's the thing. When you propose a feature request, it's sort of on you to convince everybody that a) there is a problem; and b) that your proposed solution addresses whatever concerns happen to be raised. The current design isn't there to solve a problem; it's there to prevent one. Having spent a lot of time on many metas in my previous job at SE, I'd say it still makes a fair bit of sense. Your post here is based on one case of wanting to edit something on a site you're not even active on. Why not just flag the post and ask a mod to make the edit for you? It's effectively the same thing.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Mar 3, 2014 at 4:09
  • @HugoDozois I'm not sure if there are technical limitations to that off-hand, but assuming that's not a factor... I think that's a decent idea. I don't recall seeing that feature request before, so I'm gonna have to think more on it. My only immediate concern is that it could get confusing.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Mar 3, 2014 at 4:11
  • @AnnaLear I maintain it's a ban on suggested edits - not at all a ban on edits in general. Also, this seems to have gotten mixed up with non-beta per-site metas. I'm asking specifically for beta sites to have it relaxed as they have the most to gain and the least chance it will overload the moderators. Your flag for mod editing is more work for the mod team than letting users edit posts and having it go into a queue. I'll propose a solution by referencing the idea on the other post so I appreciate the feedback on making a proper feature request.
    – bmike
    Commented Mar 3, 2014 at 5:38
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    @AnnaLear My feature request that you linked proposed exactly that. I'd probably go even further and would unify the flag queue and suggested edit queues for metas and show the unified queue on both sites. I imagine there are some technical difficulties with that, but strictly from a user and mod perspective it doesn't make sense to me to have separate queues for main and meta.
    – Mad Scientist
    Commented Mar 3, 2014 at 8:54
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    @bmike One more question: why only beta sites?
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Mar 3, 2014 at 16:37
  • @annalear I think the lack of functionality hurts beta sites more than it hurts non beta and that the reason of moderation load is less relevant on beta sites. Strategically, I think it would be a good change everywhere. Tactically, why not start on beta sites if you could/would.
    – bmike
    Commented Mar 6, 2014 at 12:52
  • If we're going to do this at all, singling out beta sites doesn't make much of a difference. It could actually be harmful, since graduation would then take a feature away again. I was just curious what your thought process behind that was. :)
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Mar 6, 2014 at 18:35
  • @AnnaLear I get the hesitation to change and then take away. I figured many things get taken away when a beta site graduates and using it as a test bed was worth asking for explicitly rather than assuming it was under consideration from the older request. Everyone expects beta rules to be a little different than graduated rules already. If you note the change made in revision 3, problems on beta sites are mentioned explicitly with the bounty edit.
    – bmike
    Commented Mar 6, 2014 at 18:38
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    To add to your list of objections: conflicting suggestions. I bumped into this issue because on a meta my next suggested tag was editor. I found a question with horrible (phonetic) misspellings that I wanted to edit but could not.
    – Jan Doggen
    Commented Sep 15, 2017 at 8:00

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