11

Today I saw an edit to this question which is also the most viewed question in TeX.SE. The edit is pretty much useless and it not even actual improved formatting (bolding the parenthesis!). I honestly don't want to be cynical but I really don't find any actual contribution behind such edits.

I see these type of edits every on and off and I believe they are done by honest users for sake of improving the website, however, sometimes I can not help it not to think that few of these edits are there solely for sake profile views and/or reputation.

I don't find myself in position to roll-back these edits. Shouldn't we have some sort of flags for edits that are pointless, as well as having a mechanism to protect some of the answers from being edited by users?

4
  • 2
    Note: It's likely the 'improvements' may get fixed :-) Even so, I guess the question will remain valid. – Joseph Wright♦ Jan 22 '14 at 14:07
  • Worth noting that the whole reason edits move things to the front page is so they get seen. – Joseph Wright♦ Jan 22 '14 at 14:08
  • And another note: The user was busy this day and made other questionable edits, but some are useful. Otherwise all of them were approved by users with enough reputation … – Speravir Jan 23 '14 at 2:31
  • Do you get any reputation for edits? Does anyone care enough about profile views that it would motivate them to add edits that they wouldn't otherwise? I'm not sure why you'd want to discourage edits that improve the formatting of questions, even if they are only 'minor'. This is meant to be a long-term repository of information, so isn't it worthwhile to improve the display of this info? – Tyler Jan 28 '14 at 20:16
12

First, you miss part of the edit. The user:

  • added a paragraph break;

  • re-formatted couple things in italics;

  • made the two parenthesis bold.

If I were reviewing that edit, I would probably correct it and un-bold the parenthesis, but still marking the edit as useful.

As for your question, no, you can't flag an edit. You can, however:

  1. Go in the chat and discuss it there;

  2. Discuss it in meta (which is what you've done)

  3. Revert the edit, or make some other corrections; however, the same rules of an edit being "too minor" apply as in the normal case. Don't revert edits just because you would do it in a different way, please. If you still decide to do so, it's very good to add a longer explanatory comment in "reason for editing".

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .