How to overcome "Edits must be at least 6 characters"

Question

On Stack Overflow, there was a question with an incorrectly formatted list, which lacked a newline before it and thus came out like this: 1. Hello 2. Something else 3. Goodbye

I changed it to the right formatting by inserting a newline:

1. Hello
2. Something else
3. Goodbye

And I got the "Edits must be at least 6 characters" error message. Is there an OK way to trick this rule?

Answer 1

Sure! Instead of tricking the rule, just look for other changes that can be made. Usually, in a post that forgets that kind of formatting, there's often at least one other error to be found. A miscapitalized letter, an extra space, or often just another formatting error of a different sort.

Remember, when you suggest an edit, it requires multiple other people to look at it and approve it. The character limit is to prevent people from wasting time by looking at exceptionally minor edits. So, don't limit yourself to just a tiny edit: try to see if you can improve the post to a possible state of perfection. If you hit all errors on a post, then no one else will even need to edit it.

Once you hit 2k reputation, and thus your edits don't need to go through the approval process, you can make those tiny changes without the limit in the way.

Answer 2

To circumvent this counterproductive rule without confusing the recipient of your edits, just add a   or HTML comment <!----> at the end of a line, where it won't make any difference to the formatting.

If Stack Exchange adds a rule to ban those (because they really prefer that you don't fix typos and mistakes), then you'll have to be creative with other non-printing or whitespace elements.

The How to Edit box next to the edit window encourages exactly these kinds of changes:

How to Edit

► fix grammatical or spelling errors

► correct minor mistakes

So it's pretty hypocritical for the site to reject your helpful contributions after explicitly asking for them.

Answer 3

I disagree with the premise that small edits are a bother to the reviewers. I only recently hit the threshold (for having edits applied directly and for reviewing others) and I think the smaller the edit is, the easier it is to approve. If I see a small typo being fixed, code formatted, or a sentence properly capitalized, I can see right away what it is and approve it.

The bigger the edit is, the longer it takes to check.

I say the 6 character limit needs to be abandoned.

Answer 4

It is incorrect for a 6 character limitation to be imposed. When you edit at top of the page there is:

We welcome all constructive edits, but please make them substantial. Avoid trivial, tiny one-letter edits unless absolutely necessary.

So what to do when absolutely necessary? That limitation needs to be removed and normal approval process take place or the above text needs to be changed with other suggestions.

P.S. I liked the answer to add non-printable characters to post. I didn't think they were counted.

Answer 5

The limit is stupid. Sometimes there are simple typos, easy to fix - but only one character. Post would improve. And nobody can tell me reviewers are overloaded because of this, because in SE-sites I can access the review-queue I have to submit much much less time with approving simple edits like fixing typos than with complicated edits. A fixed typo is easy to see.

Even worse, sometimes I find simple edits that fix something - and then do something with formatting or similar that makes the post worse. I assume that was done to reach the 6 characters.

Based on my experience as reviewer in some sites and suggesting edits in others I would say: make the edit and if it doesn't reach 6 characters add following to the end of the post:

<!-- character-limit: please remove -->

Reviewers have an 'Approve and edit'-button, so it is still simple enough to work with and it is easy to understand what the edit is for.

Answer 6

Some people feel there should be an exception to this rule for single-character errors in code. (There is a general consensus that single-character errors in sentences are highly unlikely to matter.) My approach to this is:

If it's not your question, and you see a one-character typo, your ANSWER is "hey, OP, you have a one character typo: you have [line paste] where you should have [corrected line].

If it's your question, you update it and add "Update: Sorry, when sanitizing this code I made a one-character typo: the code that causes the problem did not have [error] where it should be [correction] and I've corrected my sanitized version in this question." Now the 400+ answerers who are telling you about the typo can delete their answers.

Either way, you avoid the single-character edit.

Answer 7

I encountered the same problem, where the person that answered the question did a great job with the answer, but the links were off. So I had to edit just 3 characters.

It was an old post, I believe no one ever fixed it because of the 6 characters limitation.

It seems rather counterproductive that in order to fix a small problem you have to look around to be able to add valuable information.

What if you are like me? I found that question because I was learning about the subject. How could I add valuable information to an answer that was already correct except for the links being off? (btw just 2 links were off, so the answer had enough information to be understood).

I understand that there are people that review the corrections, and minor changes, like correcting a typo that is easy to understand would be hard to review, but I don't know, maybe something should be done for special cases like the one I had with the links.

Answer 8

I have used the   trick a few times, but I find myself adding the backticks: ` for code formatting around missed inline formats.

By highlighting these it only takes a few of them to help with the char count, but it also emphasizes often missed inline code examples.

NOTE: This is not a hack...
Rather, this is a way to add to char count by observing often overlooked formatting techniques.

Answer 9

This may be bending the rules, but here's a little trick I've found. You can edit the misspelled word, then add an empty HTML comment tag afterwards. For example:

The sum of it's effects

could be changed to:

The sum of its <!-- --> effects

which displays as:

The sum of its effects

It gets the job done for an edit of only one character. Then when the edit has been approved, you can reedit to remove the extra characters, if you want. Or it may be left in place, to be removed at the next legitimate edit.

But use this sparingly; if everyone used it just to circumvent the rule, it would eventually be banned. So use it only when you can change nothing else!

Of course, you don't have to put the comment tag close to the edit; it can actually be placed anywhere in the post.

Answer 10

I personally believe that the 6 characters rule is not really much necessary.

But anyway, another way to overcome the limit (that has not yet been mentioned), if you are just correcting a single typo or spelling error, then you can just as well leave it in a comment. And leave it up to the original poster to edit it (and possibly they may wish to apply other (positive) changes while being reminded of their old post with tiny error.)

Answer 11

Here's another workaround: Add 6 random characters, then make a follow on edit to remove those 6 characters.

Answer 12

You can use $\!$ to bypass the character requirement. Just add more \! as needed.

Note: This only works on sites with LaTeX enabled.