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Possible Duplicate:
We're discouraged from fixing typos and misspellings on SE sites?

I quite often see questions or answers with a spelling mistake or similar typo here and there, and will edit to correct them, resulting in one or two character changes (like changing affect to effect and vice-versa, as it "... Why does it have this affect").

Why is there now a minimum for edits, and can it be removed, please?

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This restriction applies only to suggested edits. If you have 2000 reputation or more on a site, or you are editing your own post, you have full edit capabilities and are not bound by this restriction. In other words, for the sites where you're seeing this limit, you have never had this ability previously because you had under 2000 reputation.

Why is this? All suggested edits must be approved by a 2000 rep user before they appear, to prevent vandalism. To stop the suggested edit queue from filling up with changes that aren't really important, six character changes are required.

For more detail, see the blog.

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  • Fair enough, I suppose. Commented Feb 6, 2011 at 2:24
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    While I agree with the principle that edits should be important, setting a minimum edit length of 6 will prevent some grammatical and spelling errors from being corrected. Whether their|they're important depends on how much weight one places on literacy. Programmers have a bad reputation for spelling and grammer|grammar. Time to turn that around.
    – user214569
    Commented Mar 6, 2013 at 23:07
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    Actually, errors in code blocks are usually important, regardless of their length. I feel we are just being encouraged to clutter SO with comments so someone with enough rep can come along and make the fix.
    – user148312
    Commented Aug 23, 2013 at 2:18
  • I hate when I fix code formatting issue and I cannot commit it because of this limitation. Commented Feb 28, 2014 at 5:48

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