I've been seeing a lot of edits recently that simply change a statement that looks like
Go check out this information at: http://www.somethingawesome.com
to
Go check out this information here
I feel like these edits are mostly done in an attempt to farm reputation as they do not substantively improve the quality of a question or answer.
What does anyone else think, should we approve of edits like this?
I see every edit as a stand-alone event. As such I try to see if there is an actual improvement to the post from the edit.
This means that in some cases I accept edits as the one above (because it in that case makes the post more fluid or easy to grasp) and in other cases I reject the edit (because it does not contribute anything to the post).
In my book, no matter how big or small, if someone is attempting to help curate content and make it more readable for everyone who visits the site, I am going to reward their effort. I might not be as stringent as some of the other mods.
In the specific case, linking to here is exceptionally bad. One is what Robert address, you have no idea where here is. It should always be the title of the article, or something even more descriptive. I know you can hover the here link and see where it leads, but I’m not sure every other user does. There is a longer explanation on UX.SE why this is the case:
The reason "Here" and "Click Here" are bad is because they are useless words. They provide no context. This isn't an accessibility issue; it is a usability issue.
There's an overwhelming amount of evidence that website visitors don't read, they scan. They scan for links to find the link they want to click on next. If your link says "click here" and the user has to read the text around the link to find out what it is for, you are adding to their cognitive load, meaning they are less likely to continue on.
So if you’re only moving a URL to a here link, I will reject. I haven’t always done this in the past, but I’ve been doing so lately. Just because it’s a bad edit. If you add a descriptive link text, I will approve of the edit.
Other than this, I approve edits that improves content, much the same way as Eric. Even if you only remove “Thank you” or “Can you please help me” or even “It’s very urgent”. These chatty post endings doesn’t make the question better, but a removal does.
To conclude, all edits that improve posts will get an approval from me. Here links doesn’t improve a post.
