up vote 10 down vote favorite
1

Now that I have 10K rep, I get to approve, reject or improve edits to answers made by low-rep users.

Is there some way I can tell the person who made the edits that I feel their edits are too major and really belong in a new answer?

The only choices I see are "approve", "reject" and "improve". Maybe the "reject" button prompts for this, but I'm reluctant to push it in case it doesn't.

Update

I think the button that says "Reject" should be changed to "Reject..." indicating that another dialog comes up, with the opportunity to cancel the reject operation.

enter image description here

share
17  
I love the title. My first reaction was "get over it, man!" :-) – whuber♦ Nov 1 '11 at 18:40
Out of curiosity, Kirk, why did you reject that particular proposed edit (which I presume the illustration is showing)? The reason it was requested in the first place has to do with multiple user accounts--did you see the comment at gis.stackexchange.com/a/8911? – whuber♦ Apr 13 '12 at 16:10
@whuber Oops, didn't realize they were the same person. How did you determine that both users are the same person? – Kirk Kuykendall Apr 13 '12 at 17:57
I'm not absolutely sure, which is why I left the comment. In general, I compare the users' stated names, websites, ISP addresses, and e-mail addresses. (I don't know whether you can see those last two.) But usually you can tell from the nature of an edit that somebody is attempting to modify their own question (or reply) from another account, so in the absence of strong evidence that they are really the same person, about all you can do is ask them for confirmation and leave the suggested edit pending in the meantime. – whuber♦ Apr 13 '12 at 18:08

1 Answer

up vote 5 down vote accepted

Pressing "reject" now (as of several weeks ago) gives you the option subsequently to select several reasons for the reject. I presume this is somehow conveyed to the would-be editor. This feature is a good start, but it would be far better to have the option to write a brief note of explanation in many cases. If someone goes to the effort of proposing an edit, they deserve an explanation of any rejection or further change and they should (usually) be given encouragement to continue their work.

share
3  
agree - the "option to write a brief note of explanation in many cases" would be good. – Mapperz♦ Nov 1 '11 at 14:21
1  
I just realized the edits to the answer were made by the person who posed the question. In this case I guess we should encourage the questioner to update his question showing how he adapted the accepted answer instead of actually editing the answer, right? Also, I don't recall any indication on the UI for accept/reject/improve that the edits to the answer were made by the questioner. This indication would be helpful. – Kirk Kuykendall Nov 1 '11 at 14:42
1  
I agree. I know which question you're asking about and was going to reject the edits until I realized they were proposed by the questioner, at which point I concluded they were an authoritative and helpful edit to the reply. Although this was an unusual case, many edit-request decisions are tricky. Sometimes I have to resort to communicating with the requester via comments, which is crude but seems to have worked (no complaints received, anyway). I am extremely reluctant to take any action that would irretrievably destroy somebody's work (such as rejecting a proposed edit outright). – whuber♦ Nov 1 '11 at 14:47

You must log in to answer this question.

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