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I think the reputation required to edit questions on SE betas should be massively lowered. Right now it almost seems like it's been overlooked; retagging and close voting were both dropped to 1, while editing remains at 2000 for private beta, 1000 for public beta

It's going to take users a minimum of two weeks to hit 2000, and past betas have shown that a massive number of questions get asked when the private beta starts at 0 days and when the public beta starts at 7 days. There are hundreds of new questions just on those two days, plus the early questions tend to define the style of the site, and nobody can edit them until weeks after they've been posted

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    To recollection, the edit requirement drops back to 1000 when you exit private beta.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Oct 20, 2010 at 3:03
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    @Grace Ah, I see. Why is it higher on the private beta? It might as well be 100k, I don't think anyone is going to make 2k in 7 days
    – Michael Mrozek
    Commented Oct 20, 2010 at 3:39
  • I tried to give awareness about it with my rep requirements compared question -- I wasn't too successful I guess.
    – badp
    Commented Oct 20, 2010 at 5:35
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    If I had to put a guess on it? The intent is that editing (and also deletion) is basically unachieveable during the private beta. That way, people can focus more on what's on-topic/off-topic, and also promote discussion in comments with the author instead of a bunch of people from the side deciding to pop in and provide the edits themselves. Discuss first instead of act first. Something like stronger comrade-bonds since the community is much smaller and more closely knit during that week, perhaps? That's how I thought of it when Gaming was in private beta, at least.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Oct 20, 2010 at 12:39

2 Answers 2

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This is effectively completed, as edit suggestions means any users with 1 rep can now submit edits into the approval queue.

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Why on beta only? I think that edit threshold should be globally equal to retag.
Both actions are almost equally potentially destructive and so we are only wasting people enthusiasm. For instance think of all the junky questions of newbie users on SO -- this is a flow unmanageable by this 10-something per cent of users with edit privileges and so they accumulate, often as unanswered.

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  • I'm ok with the argument to lower the editing rep, but "both actions are almost equally potentially destructive" is completely untrue -- changing the tags of a post isn't nearly as destructive as changing the title and text
    – Michael Mrozek
    Commented Oct 24, 2010 at 0:24
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    @Michael The question is whether it possible that an user with rep sufficient for retag will be willing to change random questions to "w00t lOl :-P!". If so, he just could express his destructive desire in adding [lolcode] to random questions.
    – mbq
    Commented Oct 26, 2010 at 23:07
  • But thanks to tag filtering and moderator mass tag actions, it's quite easy to take care of rogue tagging. It's not so easy to do the same for post bodies.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Nov 19, 2010 at 21:54
  • I'm also pretty sure adding the [lolcode] tag to a question isn't equally as destructive as erasing the entire post or replacing it with a giant porn picture
    – Michael Mrozek
    Commented Nov 19, 2010 at 23:16
  • @Grace, @Michael My point is different; I don't understand why we assume that with 500 points someone is credible enough to make constructive retags but we think he/she will be destructive editor. Indeed I even think that suboptimal retag makes more harm than suboptimal edit, not to mention one can easy perform a massive-retag immune rouge retag by adding random popular tags in random places.
    – mbq
    Commented Nov 19, 2010 at 23:35
  • Retagging is an earlier permission because it's far more prevalent to need tag changes than to need post edits. Proper tagging helps a lot, and it is a lot more useful to have people who can assist on that. That's why it's delegated earlier, not because we assume they'd be destructive with edits.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Nov 19, 2010 at 23:38
  • @Grace This is a crazy talk.
    – mbq
    Commented Nov 20, 2010 at 12:37

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