What makes edits by moderators and users with high reputation better than edits from lower reputation users

Question

I edited this question by changing the title and it was rejected (I kept the body unchanged due to past experience with editing). I wanted to add a tag related to the phone but it didn't exist. It was later on edited and approved (I am fine with the edits made by Andrew T.).

When I started with editing posts, there used to be many of them rejected because I only changed capital letters or corrected a few grammatical errors or formatting that were not considered not good enough. I learned from them thanks to a moderator who told me what I can and should not do to make my edits better. Although I have carried on with editing posts, I refrain myself of others (usually when checking first post, I just click Skip even when I see there are possibilities to edit a post). But when a moderator or high reputations users modify the posts, even when their changes are not that different from what a user with a low reputation would have made, they are approved (sorry, I am too lazy to find many examples; I will only mention the link above as example).

There is a question in StackExchange that deal with whether "Thanks", "Thank you" and such, should be kept or removed (edited out) on questions. There were some users who said that they should be kept, yet it was removed from the original post. There are other edits on the aforementioned post that are also correcting capital letters, punctuation, etc; and yet it was approved (I have made other similar changes to post like the one described on the previous sentence and they were approved).

Why are they (the edits from moderators and high reputation users) consider better? How does the edits that would have been rejected when made by a new user or user with a low reputation be accepted when moderators and high reputation users?

Note: I am not sure if I should consider myself lower or higher reputation.

Fun fact: I learned today that Community is able to reject edit.

Answer 1

I'd like to start this by explaining why I rejected that edit.

I rejected (and edited) that suggestion¹ after I have approved (and edited) 3 suggested edits by you consecutively: 1, 2, 3:

• 1st suggested edit: image resizing is mostly welcomed (due to the current notorious buggy Imgur's image scaling), though the title shortening and the addition of Android version tag were questionable. The suggested title would make the question too general, and there's no indicator that this was specific to Android 8.1. However, I decided to err on the side of caution and approved the suggestion as good intention, then clarified the title, removed the tag, and added a more relevant tag.

• 2nd suggested edit: the suggestion added paragraphs to make it more readable, fixed some capitalization, and clarified the steps. Though there were some missed capitalizations ("chrome" on the first paragraph) and typo on the name of the app ("Pintrest"), the overall suggestion was good and hence my approval. I also took a liberty to fix the rest & remove fluff that I feel didn't add anything to the answer

• 3rd suggested edit: fixing code formatting properly is welcomed, though I wondered why you didn't fix all capitalizations and punctuation in the beginning. I decided to approve for the code formatting and edited the rest.

• 4th suggested edit (¹ the review preview is misleading because only the title was changed, compare to the original revision instead): the suggestion only fixed the title. Ignoring the fact that the editor couldn't create a new tag (which is understandable), while the title fix was an improvement, I couldn't ignore the rest that none of the capitalizations ("android", "i") and the spacing after punctuation were fixed. At this point, I decided to reject and fix all obvious issues. The fluff removal was my personal judgment. Had the suggestion fixed all the obvious issues even without removing fluff, I'd approve it.

I understand your good intention on improving this community by suggesting edits, and I really appreciate it! However, the help center on 'edit' privilege (2000 reps) mentions this

Tiny, trivial edits are discouraged - try to make the post significantly better when you edit, correcting all problems that you observe.

^{(italic emphasized mine)}

The first 3 suggestions were certainly improvements to me, and that's why I approved them. However, the last one... fell short to me, and hence my decision to reject it.

Now, please don't be discouraged due to that rejection, keep up on suggesting edits! But I'd like to also take this as an opportunity to let you know about this and edit more carefully from now, and we'll have a win-win situation :)

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Now, for the rest of the meta question

When I started with editing posts, there used to be many of them rejected because I only changed capital letters or corrected a few grammatical errors or formatting that were not considered not good enough.

Personally, if I faced the "capital letters" review independently, I might have approved it (though I could also see the edit as too minor). However, it might be a similar case to this when you suggested many consecutive edits with some questionable quality and made the reviewers wary about the edits.

The "formatting" one was an edit conflict, so it's not really your fault (and it's an acceptable edit too). It's just that someone with full edit privilege was editing the post at the same time, overriding your suggested edit.

There is a question in StackExchange that deal with whether "Thanks", "Thank you" and such, should be kept or removed (edited out) on questions.

Should 'Hi', 'thanks', taglines, and salutations be removed from posts? is always a controversial topic. Some agree that those are noise that doesn't add anything to the post, but others disagree because of social interaction (and to the extent of the recent "SO is not welcoming" uproar). While I'm on the side of "no fluff", I don't strictly enforce this policy to others. It's up to personal preference.

Why are they (the edits from moderators and high reputation users) consider better? How does the edits that would have been rejected when made by a new user or user with a low reputation be accepted when moderators and high reputation users?

Please don't take it wrong. Edits done by moderators and high reputation users (2000+ reps who can edit freely) are not always considered better. Sometimes they still make mistakes (I believe I did) because they are humans too! However, their edits are automatically applied instead of being put into a review, so they might look like "better".

However, consider the previous guideline from the help center: "Tiny, trivial edits are discouraged".

Since users having less than 2000 reps get their edits reviewed by other users, consider choosing and editing posts that really need to be fixed. For really minor typo and grammatical issues, you might be better in posting a comment to let the OP or other users fix them.

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Fun fact: I learned today that Community is able to reject edit.

The Community (bot) user is able to reject edit when either an edit conflict happens (an edit suggestion is overridden by other user's edit), or when someone chooses "Reject and Edit" from the review. On the other hand, it is also able to approve edit when someone chooses "Improve Edit".

Answer 2

How does the edits that would have been rejected when made by a new user or user with a low reputation be accepted when moderators and high reputation users?

Users with 2000 or above reputation points (henceforth as privileged editor) are granted a privilege where their edits take place immediately. The system trusts a user with such reputation, and thus, no longer puts their edits into a review queue. To put it simply, they are auto-approved by the system instead of reviewers. In case you find the criteria of points inadequate or arbitrary you can raise you issue on network's meta.

All edits from sub-2k reputation (rep) users go into a review queue, and many reviewers consider it a waste of their time (remember, they do this voluntarily) when trivial edits are introduced and the post still needs a fix. They naturally expect a sub-2k rep editor to substantially fix a post in a single instance. Furthermore, since the system rewards sub-2k rep editors with 2 points for a successfully approved edit, the expectation is further high to ensure such editor doesn't end up gaming the system. Privileged editors do not earn rep for their edits.

That been said, content editing guidelines are applicable to all (with some modifications as introduced through guidelines' interpretation). If a privileged editor introduces trivial changes in a post which is in need of a substantial fix than they are making bad edits. However, a trivial edit (misspelling, typos and such) can be accepted if the post is already clear in understanding, in formatting and in grammar. If you come to notice a bad edit from anyone, than regardless of yours and their reputation points, you should consider kindly and responsibly notifying that editor (ideally via chat but can also be through comments) about the fixes needed. Responsibly means that you should fix the post yourself before highlighting the mistakes to that editor.

Some reads you would find useful:

• Why are trivial edits discouraged?
• Do small title edits constitute trivial edits? - I prefer this when reviewing a post
• Editing posts that contain salutations or other edits that could be considered “minor”
• Should 'Hi', 'thanks', taglines, and salutations be removed from posts? - I suppose you have already read this
• What do I put in the edit summary if I edit a question to remove “Thanks”-like text?
• Is 2000 Rep really needed to change one letter?
• How to fix one letter typos?
• How to overcome “Edits must be at least 6 characters”?
• Should we edit spelling mistakes or not?
• Review of minor suggested edits
• Key points to remember while editGaming the edit system with tiny edits?ing a post
• Proper editing practices
• Editing policy is contradictory and unclear

Why are they (the edits from moderators and high reputation users) consider better?

Experience with qualitative edits help in making the posts better (barring few exceptions). Usually, an editor would also be a content contributor, hence, the user would have both an increase in reputation and editing experience in parallel. So by the time they start making significantly, and at times, incredibly good edits, it is natural for an unsuspecting user to assume high-reputation user is equivalent of a qualitative editor.

However, this is not always the case, and so, all edits, in my opinion, should ideally be reviewed at some point. Some are already done so by reviewers through edit queue, and some others by members of this community (henceforth as members) manually by checking the revisions to ensure that both reviewers and editors (regardless of points) are making only qualitative edits. Both type of reviews are voluntary. While the first one grants a recognition (badges and review counts in profile) and is relatively easy to do because of the tools available from the system, the latter is rather tedious and doesn't incentivise a member at all.

The criteria of what constitutes a better edit is available in the help page of each site in summary and explained in various posts on Meta StackExchange (read highly voted posts). It is open to interpretation and I use the opinion of jmort253 et al when reviewing a post. Since there is no rejection of edits from privileged editors, I simply make an edit on top of their edits or from an earlier revision when needed be. If the edit is destructive in intent I notify a user in comments. This is also voluntary for each privileged editor.

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Now, for the editing part. Please consider using backticks (`) only for code and code-like texts. Backticks reduces readability when used outside of aforesaid texts. In this meta question, Skip does not qualify to be used with backticks. If you end up using backticks a lot in a single edit without a need, a reviewer may get irked and simply reject the edit.

Second, it is deemed unnecessary to fix misspelling or typos in many posts. Our site, unfortunately, receives a lot of posts which are in need of substantial fixes. It is better to focus your efforts on something which can be greatly improved. It would benefit us as well reward your conscience (possibly) that you did something more helpful today. :)

And finally, see why does the Community user approve and reject edits?.