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I've recently rejected this edit proposal (2nd version) as I thought it's not adding to the value of the question, and anyway the question is off-topic.

Later I was surprised to see that the proposal was accepted by the others.

Do I have different standards / view on usefulness then the community?

Update

This is an example, from time to time I see (accepted proposed) edits which doesn't make sense.

Shall / can we do anything to better educate users?

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    I would have rejected it too
    – Burgi
    Commented Jan 6, 2017 at 14:38
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    I would have rejected it also on the ground that while it addresses a minor problem, it doesn't improve the question or resolve the major problem with the question, allowing it to be opened again. This question could be modified, to be within our scope, by changing one key sentence. On a sort of personal note, The editor that made that edit proposal has been around long enough to know this, so thats another reason i would have rejected the edit. Of course the primary reason falls back to the fact, the actual problem with the question (request for software), wasn't resolved.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jan 6, 2017 at 14:41
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    With regards to your update, it isn't easy to see when your edits have been rejected. You only get an notification when it is accepted, perhaps this needs to be a ping in the in tray?
    – Burgi
    Commented Jan 6, 2017 at 14:59
  • That's a good idea @Burgi! It could work similarly to the notification of rejected flag.
    – Máté Juhász
    Commented Jan 6, 2017 at 15:04
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    Would have rejected it. There are many other lines to fix, not just the first. It's also not even fixing a typo, it's changing the spelling on the editor's preference with disrespect to the original author
    – random Mod
    Commented Jan 6, 2017 at 15:57
  • Your logic is right on target. A lot of low-value edits slip through because reviewers haven't had enough coffee.
    – fixer1234
    Commented Jan 6, 2017 at 16:02
  • I've seen a raft of suggested edits lately that have consisted almost entirely of removing familiar phrases. I wonder if some of the Winter Bash motivation is getting some people to propose such minor/unnecessary edits in greater volume than is normal, and that this will die down in a few weeks.
    – music2myear
    Commented Jan 6, 2017 at 16:57
  • I would have rejected it for claiming to fix a spelling error when it does nothing of the sort.
    – TRiG
    Commented Jan 6, 2017 at 17:25
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    I have no problem stepping forward and admitting that I was one of the two reviewers who approved the proposed edit. Of course, I am more than willing to defer to the experience of those who have been on Super User much longer than my short 3-month tenure. For what it's worth, I was focusing my attention on the "cruft" aspect that Ben describes below and didn't stop to assess the macro-level problem of whether or not it was on-topic. Obviously that is my shortcoming, and in the future I will endeavor to scrutinize each proposed edit for topic-related issues much more closely.
    – Run5k
    Commented Jan 6, 2017 at 18:23

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Your concern is understandable. Edits that change the post without improving it waste the time of reviewers and people viewing the front page. If the edit fixes all the obvious issues with the post, it should be approved.

First, the review task in question.

In this case, I would probably have approved that edit if it tried to fix the topicality. If there was no topicality issue, there'd be nothing wrong with approving that edit - it makes the post and site better by removing cruft. The more we can show people we're not a standard forum, the better. Note that the Improve Edit button is good for cases where the editor makes a good effort toward a polished post but just missed a thing or two. If the question weren't off-topic, I would use that button to adjust the grammar of the first couple sentences. Alas, it is off-topic, so rejecting the edit is understandable.

When it comes to alerting users of edit rejections, there's already a thing for that: a notice will appear when the edit suggester goes to edit another post. The warning gets more and more severe as more rejections accumulate. If the edit was approved despite your reject vote, one option is to talk to the user in chat (if they use it) and help them do better next time.

If you're wondering how you stack up with other reviewers in terms of accept-to-total-reviews ratio, I wrote an SEDE query that orders all Suggested Edits reviewers from most permissive (i.e. most likely to use the Accept button) to least. You come in as the 14th least permissive out of the 342 reviewers who looked at >20 suggestions. You use Approve on 59.39% of the reviews you perform. Considering the quality of some edit suggestions, I think that's just fine.

(Note that this query completely ignores "Improve Edit" and "Reject and Edit" votes; they're not in the SuggestedEditVotes table and there's no UserId column in ReviewTaskResults. There are MSE requests to change the former and the latter.)

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    Thanks Ben! Great answer! Does your query count "improve edit" also as accepted? Interesting to see how Many people have 90+% acceptance rate.
    – Máté Juhász
    Commented Jan 6, 2017 at 20:02
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    Yes, interesting query. I was also curious how improve edits count. I have to wonder how much value people are adding to the process when they approve 100% or close to it (unless they are just extremely selective and skip all they don't plan to approve).
    – fixer1234
    Commented Jan 6, 2017 at 22:11
  • @MátéJuhász Oops, I just noticed that "Improve Edit" and "Reject and Edit" verdicts don't appear at all in the SuggestedEditVotes table. Unfortunately, the user ID column is missing from the ReviewTaskResults table, so this is probably the best we can get.
    – Ben N
    Commented Jan 7, 2017 at 1:29
  • Doesn't the user who improves the edit then get credit for the edit. At least users with 2000 reputation, cause I know the few times I have done it, the edit is immediately approved.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jan 7, 2017 at 3:41
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    @Ramhound, I'm pretty sure when you improve the edit, the community user approves the original edit. So I'm guessing that the approvals in this query probably exclude improvements (both editors get credit but the improver's stats don't include an approval count for that case).
    – fixer1234
    Commented Jan 7, 2017 at 6:11
  • This suggests that Stack Exchange has trouble doing accounting (giving “credit”) for “Improve Edit”.
    – G-Man Says 'Reinstate Monica'
    Commented Jan 11, 2017 at 3:17
  • Suggested change: "The warning gets more severe as rejections accumulate" instead of "The warning gets more and more severe and more rejections accumulate".
    – newenglander
    Commented Jan 17, 2017 at 8:51
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I am also strict enough. I will not accept and edit just because it removes a 'thanks' at the end. I've also seen edits that try to change grammar content without reason. Those must be checked carefully because even a comma can change the meaning of the content.

I allow general typo fixes or CAPS/CaSe fixes, they improve the overall aspect and quality of the content.

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