Remove trivial edit restriction

Question

On the beta sites, if I spot a typo I want to correct it. Sometimes that may only be one letter. But I can't because:

You do not have edit privileges. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

This is a pain because I do have rights on other sites but, OK, I can live with it. So I make my correction and add the Edit Summary as "Typo". Then I see:

Comment must be at least 10 chars long

OK, so I change the Edit Summary to "typo this is a 10 character comment" which is not the best comment ever but by now I'm getting frustrated that fixing one letter is so hard whereas in other software (e.g. MediaWiki on Wikipedia) I would be done by now.

Then I see:

Oops! Your edit couldn't be submitted because:

• Edits must be at least 6 characters; is there something else to improve in this post?

Oops!?! I just want to make the post more readable and I've spent several minutes trying to jump through all the hoops and it still isn't changed! Aargh!

So I looked on meta and found the question had been asked: Why are trivial edits discouraged? The highest voted answer starts with "I think this is an excellent question and I'm unsure about the answer myself."

So to my question - actually a feature request. Please can we allow fixing trivial edits?

In the case I was looking at, the word "no" was typed when it should have been "not" and it took me a few reads to figure it out. For people who find English difficult, it might confuse them further.

(I think concerns about bumping posts or posts becoming "Community wiki" could be dealt with, e.g. by introducing a "this is a minor edit" button - again, like Wikipedia.)

Answer 1

Yes, the trivial edit restriction should be removed from all sites, not just betas. All helpful edits should be encouraged and welcomed.

The number of characters is not a good metric for the constructiveness of an edit. Some small edits are very important. Some large edits are not. As long as the edit is improving the quality of the site's content, who cares how many characters are involved? Should we also ban edits that only consist of numerals? That would be equally arbitrary.

In fact, 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

It's pretty hypocritical and counterproductive to ask users to make such contributions and then reject them after they try.

Counterarguments:

• Some argue that reputation is awarded for making edits, so people could use spell-checking bots to "game the system" and gain rep without doing any work.
  • True, but that's not solved by banning small edits. It's solved by not rewarding rep for small edits.
• Others argue that the small edits contribute to community wiki status or bump topics to the front page unnecessarily.
  • Again, this is not solved by banning small edits. It's solved by not counting small edits towards CW status and not bumping when they are made.
• Others argue that there's always something that can be improved in an answer, so the small edit limitation is not actually a limitation.
  • This is false. While there are often additional things to be fixed, there aren't always. Forcing users to make additional changes can actually harm answers through changing the meaning of the original poster or by confusing people with nonsense edits to meet the quota. Encourage people to look for further changes that need to be made, sure, but don't mandate it. Pop up a window asking them to look for more things that need changing, make them click a button more than once, sure, but don't reject their help if they've looked and can't find anything else to improve.

These are all flaws in the site's design, not in the person going out of their way to improve the quality of its content. Don't punish people for trying to help.

Answer 2

So to my question - actually a feature request. Please can we allow fixing trivial edits?

Nope. In fact, trivial edits (by low-rep users) are explicitly discouraged:

Sam was against making this stricter, but I am going to overrule him on this and implement more strict checking myself; I would rather be too strict and reject some edits than have to deal with a continal stream of character-twiddling edit suggesting users.

-- Jeff Atwood, Should tiny edits be accepted or rejected in review?

Remember: someone - usually three someones - has to review your edit after you've made it. Lots of tiny, inconsequential typo-fixing just ends up making loads of tedious, mind-numbing work for the volunteers who do this. Don't waste their time: make your edits count!

(I think concerns about bumping posts or posts becoming "Community wiki" could be dealt with, e.g. by introducing a "this is a minor edit" button - again, like Wikipedia.)

Implicit in this suggestion (and it's been suggested many times...) is the notion that minor edits don't change anything important (and hence don't need peer review). But if you're changing something that doesn't matter, then why change it at all?!

Now, I understand how irritating one little typo can be. Heck, it's part of why I strive to get the full editing privilege on any site I'm actually interested in - so that I can scratch these little itches...

But we must look at them in perspective: it takes mere seconds to make such an edit. It takes just as long (if not longer!) for reviewers to review and accept them: there's an amount of overhead involved in this regardless of how trivial the actual change is. And that's assuming the post is actually 100% perfect following your edit: if the reviewer has to go in and fix ten other problems anyway... Or the post is utter trash and gets deleted... Then what was the point of your little edit?

The frustration you feel should be a motivation to gain full editing rights on the site you care so much about. For now, do your best to become a better editor.

Answer 3

Absolutely yes, we should remove the restriction.

The argument in favor of the restriction seems to be "It takes at least three people to review and approve an edit, so you should make your edit count."

Do we have any data to back up the theory that more = better? I have to say I find it difficult to buy that proposition. I had a fairly clear counter-example today: A ~1k user edited one of my answers. He made three changes:

1. He incorrectly changed "You have three choices:" to "You have three choices;".
   This was wrong.

2. He changed "Frequently it's" to "It's usually".
   This was no improvement.

3. He changed a typo where I'd written "copy" but I meant "cope."
   This was helpful.

So what happened? Because the first two changes were dodgy at best, instead of it being a no-brainer three approvals, it took five different reviewers to approve it, then me (a sixth person) to fix the damage caused by the first two edits.

I don't know what was in the editor's mind, but my guess is he dropped in to fix the copy/cope typo and got stuck, only making the other edits when he found out he couldn't just fix what was broken.

So: One editor and six reviewers (counting me) to fix a one-character typo. If he'd just been able to fix the typo, even a casual glance at the line he changed would have lead to an "approve" and three of us could have not wasted our time.

Answer 4

It's understandable why this is often requested, and taken at face value it seems it would allow improvements, but most small edits I've seen are a waste of reviewers time, and often are not the only or even most needed edits in a post.

I'm sure yours (reader) are fine, but as so many are not fine there needs to be a quality filter.

For tiny/trivial edits consider this basic criteria - to be useful the edit should be:

1. Legitimate
2. Improves the post
3. Worthy of 3 users' time (review)
4. The only possible fix in the post

They are all mandatory. NOTE: (4) is mandatory with tiny/trivial edits specifically, otherwise the trivial edit is lazy or someone wanting rep/badges.

"fixing grammar or spelling is an improvement", with small edits specifically I'd say that's only true if also satisfies all of the above four points, 3 and 4 especially.

So the restriction should remain because "less than 6 chars" cannot satisfy the above criteria. E.g. fixing a few lower case "i" doesn't necessarily satisfy 3 even if it satisfies 2. If more is edited and/or 4 is satisfied, it might satisfy 3. But this level of checking cannot be viably scripted.

The minimum 6 character restriction has likely forced many users to re-think about that tiny edit, and made them see potential other improvements to make the edit worthwhile.

The restriction also reduces people who do it for rep and badges, reducing their lowest possible hanging fruit. Yes, people suggest small edits out of good intentions, but the outcome of those people and the rep hunters is the same - additional strain on review queues and not much improvement.

I'd say this is requested mostly by people without the edit privilege. But when you have edit privileges and reviewed a fair few suggested edits on small/trivial things, you should really understand why the restriction does more good than any potential benefit that may come from removing/lowering it.

Answer 5

It sort of seems like there is a false choice happening here that all small edits have to go through a human user in order for the edit to be accepted. Why not just put it through a spell checker and grammar checker after the fix before sending it to the humans to be verified? If they pass the grammar and spell checks just let them through without further verification. Or maybe just reduce it to one human instead of three in the case of small edits.

Perhaps Stack Exchange is unnecessarily concerned about vandalism (why else restrict small edits?). I'm pretty sure the community will sort it out if Wikipedia has shown us anything.

I would also suggest lowering the limit of rep points to qualify for small edits to ~100 points. I doubt I'll ever have 2k rep even though I'm a near daily user because I don't go out of my way to answer questions and I have no intention of trying to play the points game but I do want to see the site have better content.

I would also agree that producing gratuitous edits to clear the 6 character limit is stupid. Maybe I don't know what else is wrong with this answer apart from a misspelled word. Part of what I bring to the table is being a native English speaker and a good proofreader but I don't necessarily know anything about the subject I'm editing. Why can't I provide my expertise without additional hassle?