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Was wondering what is the policy on SharePoint exchange for reviewing edits that only delete "thank you" or similar greetings/thanks in a question.

On the main site the common view that is to reject such edits as too minor. This seems to be based on the fact that similar edit often do not improve or resolve other problems the question may have and also cause clutter in the review quee. So, while removing thanks and such is wanted, the general consensus is that only editors with more than 2k rep should do that, so that such edits do not end up in the quee and in the end make reviewers lose time.

Now... here on SharePoint the quee is often empty. Should we follow the same view as above or we can just approve them since the query isn't so full that those edits will be a problem?

I am asking this because I have seen a trend in those days - thanks deletion only edits on the lose. Since users are almost always the same, I suspect that someone is performing a search for words like Hi an Thanks.... Should we just approve them and move on or start rejecting as for main site "policy"?

BTW, What made me post this question is a specific comment from Jeff on meta.

This is rather dangerous advice, given that users can gain +1000 rep from submitting trivial, meaningless suggested edits -- that takes time for two other users to read and approve. This is not a practice that should be encouraged. It's important that suggested edits be substantive. While "substantive" can be somewhat in the eye of the beholder, try to consider the value of your fellow users' time when evaluating suggested edits. Was this edit worth everyone's time? Did the person submitting the edit put a reasonable amount of effort into making the edit an actual improvement?

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  • I admit I do these kind of edits which (I now understand) isn't wanted here. However they come from the Review First Posts queue, where every other user adds the "Thank you", "Thanks", "Regards" and the like notes. So if I understand you correct, I should leave these notes unattended until I reach 2K in rep and the need for suggested edits approval isn't needed on questions and answers.
    – Benny Skogberg Mod
    Feb 28, 2013 at 8:52
  • @BennySkogberg Actually, while it was indeed your suggestion that made me ask this, I don't really know if we should follow the main meta policy or not. You see: main cause for this policy seems to be "not filling the queue" but here on SharePoint you will see 3-4 post max for each review tab: do we really need to block those suggestions? I am still not sure.
    – SPArcheon
    Feb 28, 2013 at 10:13
  • @BennySkogberg anyway, seems that mods here all agree for accepting them, so I don't belive there is a standard policy. That said, IMHO if you want you could continue proposing, no need to stop. I will just skip over them until I finally decide what to do, but others will probably accept them. I hoped this question would bring more discussion... but as always our meta is a desert land.
    – SPArcheon
    Feb 28, 2013 at 10:18
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    Ah I see! On UX.SE we don't follow the main meta policy, since there are a lot of users emptying the list every hour. On UX.SE the total suggested edit count is 2527, here its 2754. Not that much of a difference
    – Benny Skogberg Mod
    Feb 28, 2013 at 10:19
  • LOL, I will. But I agree with you here - it really is desert land on meta.SharePoint and Chat!
    – Benny Skogberg Mod
    Feb 28, 2013 at 10:24
  • @BennySkogberg yea, 2754 from the start. On the main stackoverflow.com site it is 2375 today. So I guess it is just normal that they don't really want to review thanks removal edits. Here we have about.... 1 suggestion/day so maybe we shouldn't worry.
    – SPArcheon
    Feb 28, 2013 at 10:41

3 Answers 3

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I've always just accepted them.

In my opinion, we want to encourage substantive edits but I can also appreciate that people are trying to contribute.

If you notice a trend where a user is just editing out "Thanks", lets try to encourage them to not waste their time unless the edit actually is a significant contribution.

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  • Wouldn't letting such users "farm" rep in this fashion compromise the integrity of the reputation system to some degree? Maybe just encourage said users to make more substantive edits, but actually start denying them if they refuse to yield? Or is that playing favorites?
    – thanby
    Feb 21, 2013 at 20:45
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    @thanby - that was my though, too. As Jeff indicated, you can gain up to 1k rep this way. Kit, you said "lets try to encourage them to not waste their time"... problem is that only users with rep<2k will perform a search for "thank" and start filling the quee. From their point of view, they aren't losing time... they are farming "mats" at a +2 rate.
    – SPArcheon
    Feb 22, 2013 at 8:56
  • Also, an edit will end up in the quee only if the user doesn't already have the edit priv. That means that most of the time an edit in the quee is an edit the user can gain something from. That's why I was asking myself if we should follow Jeff suggestion.
    – SPArcheon
    Feb 22, 2013 at 8:58
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I also always accept them, so not sure who has rejected them?

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  • here on sharepoint I don't know, on Stack is seems the default policy. As I said this seems to have two reason: first, the quee is longer on stack, so such items get in the way. Second, Jeff and some other mods see this as a questionable game to the system. An user should be allowed to gain up to 1k rep by removing "hi" and "thanks"?
    – SPArcheon
    Feb 22, 2013 at 15:05
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    I've accepted some, but when I realized once that every review in the queue was from Benny Skogberg removing "Thanks" and "Thanks in advance" and "- User Name", I rejected the rest as too trivial thinking he was trying to farm rep. I know when I started on this site I tried to farm rep by doing edits, but stopped doing minor edits when I had a few get rejected for only fixing one spelling error or something. So I figured if that was too minor, removing "Thanks" probably is too. So to answer your question "who has rejected them?" - I have. No offense Benny.
    – RJ Cuthbertson
    Feb 25, 2013 at 19:19
  • @rjcup3 Actually, that was just the reason that made me post this question. Not that I don't think that removing thanks and such is bad... but I am not sure I really want to have a review queue filled only by similar edits. Not that the queue is so long anyway (on Stackexchange the numbers are a little... different), so I am still a little confused.
    – SPArcheon
    Feb 26, 2013 at 8:14
  • I started fixing the rest of the post, using the "Improve" option instead of the "Reject" option. I've found that in the suggested edits with the removal of these phrases, the rest of the post is being neglected, so I just finish the job while I'm there.
    – RJ Cuthbertson
    Feb 26, 2013 at 14:49
  • @AndersRask None taken :-) I'm fairly new to SharePoint.SE and have been tought edits from UX.SE where any edit is appreciated. But if the policy here is to keep "Thanks" and "User name" in the collaborative Q&A SharePoint.SE I'll stop.
    – Benny Skogberg Mod
    Feb 28, 2013 at 7:53
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    @BennySkogberg i think that comment was pointed towards rjcup3 and not me :) FWIW i have no problem with people "harvesting rep" if edits are legit, as it keeps our site clean and usable
    – Anders Rask
    Feb 28, 2013 at 12:20
  • @AndersRask It was really, I didn't read the commenter row accurate :-)
    – Benny Skogberg Mod
    Feb 28, 2013 at 13:06
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Being "new" to SharePoint.SE coming from UX.SE (a gigant leap - I know) I feel that this is not an issue. The whole purpose of editing *.SE is listed in FAQ;

Other people can edit my posts?!

All contributions are licensed under Creative Commons and this site is collaboratively edited, like Wikipedia. If you see something that needs improvement, click edit and help us make it so!

In my opinion this overrules Jeffs' idea of keeping edits "substantial" for users having less than 2k. If that is an issue, violating the system, the system would have changed.

Still - I can understand why Jeff posted it on meta.SO, but our comparably small site doesn't have that issue. So let's keep new users like myself edit posts in the best interest of the community, and let them gain reps just because they're interested to do so. Our relativly small community have to support any content managing action we can, to keep on growing as a community.

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