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I (<2000 rep) wanted to edit a question, mainly to rephrase the title and to edit the tags. Since I was dealing with the question already, I fixed a few minor things in the question body (e.g. typos, spaces, punctuation). Because these things added up to fewer than 6 characters, the edit couldn't be submitted, even though I made substantial edits to title and tags:

Oops! Your edit couldn't be submitted because:

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

Once I went back and only edited the title and the tags, it was possible to submit the edit.

I understand the 6-character-limit is supposed to prevent the question from unnecessarily being pushed up in the list of questions and probably to avoid keeping the 10k+ users and mods busy with approving nit-pick edits. However, since this will happen anyway, I think the 6-character-limit should be suspended if the title or the tags are edited as well.

(I don't know if there's a 6-character-limit for edits within the title as well.)

P.S.: Concerning the above-quoted error message: I think is there anything else would be more appropriate than is there something else. Perhaps a native speaker opinion on this one? Afaik, something implies the expectation that there actually is something else, as opposed to anything, which leaves room for either outcome.

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    On the English question, this is a quite subtle point. The intention (I think) behind using 'something' rather than 'anything' is that there's an implied conditional: if there's nothing else, you can't submit your edit, so you'd better find something. (I.e., "No" is not an acceptable answer to the question.) So in a sense, there has to be the expectation that there actually is something (as you suggested.)
    – Alan Munn
    Aug 8, 2011 at 14:44
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    One thing to note is that if the body of the question is edited too often (I don't know the current threshold), then the question is turned into CW. Hence lots of small edits are discouraged.
    – Caramdir
    Aug 8, 2011 at 16:25
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    There's no limit for title edits, so changing just 1 character in the title is allowed. Aug 8, 2011 at 17:45
  • Here's the relevant feature-request on meta.SO: Title edit plus minor body edit return 'too short' error. Aug 11, 2011 at 7:52

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This limit and the message comes from stackexchange itself, i.e. applies to all xxx.stackexchange.com sites and can't be independently configured for TeX.SX. At least the stackexchange admins also read this meta.

There is also a general SX meta site which can be used for such general suggested. However, I'm quite sure there are already similar posts like that there.

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  • Sorry that I keep forgetting going to meta.so directly. I just browsed through meta.so and didn't find any questions that really addressed this situation of additional editing (i.e. that of the body) making an edit impossible that was possible before. (I did come across a nice hack though that I could just use next time :).) Should this question be migrated over there once again?
    – doncherry
    Aug 8, 2011 at 12:12

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