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I've done a fair amount of rejecting of edit suggestions over at Gaming lately, and I've noticed (presumably due to our recent surge of new users), a sharp uptick in invalid edits that should really be comments, or even answers.

In one case, the only answer a question has gotten, has come in the form of an invalid edit.

While I'm stuck rejecting these edits at the moment, I would love, particularly in the case of anonymous ones that make real contributions (and I've seen a few others), to have some means of flagging them for a mod to convert them to a comment or answer. It just doesn't feel right to have my best course of action being to copy an anonymous users contribution and post it myself, to claim whatever rep or kudos might accrue from such action.

To make it clear what I'm suggesting, here are a few examples from just the past month or so on Gaming.SE. Most of these are constructive and useful comments, but generally make for poor edits.

https://gaming.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/4434
https://gaming.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/4128
https://gaming.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/4252
https://gaming.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/4840

And some attempts to answer the question via an edit:
https://gaming.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/4334
https://gaming.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/4508
https://gaming.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/4238
https://gaming.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/3908

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  • 2
    You could post it as community wiki to avoid unwarranted rep, couldn't you? But something better would of course be preferable.
    – Daniel Fischer
    Commented Mar 29, 2012 at 21:50
  • The only problem I see is if they don't have the ability to post comments yet, then their edit should not be allowed to be converted to a comment either. We shouldn't provide new users with the facility to circumvent the system.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Mar 29, 2012 at 21:58
  • @animuson but we already do this now. Mods have the ability to convert non-answers to comments as it is. The fact that Joe-Stupid McAnonymous managed to stumble onto the Edit button instead of the Answer Question button doesn't really make them any less deserving of that conversion.
    – LessPop_MoreFizz
    Commented Mar 29, 2012 at 22:00
  • @LessPop_MoreFizz: But they don't do that very often. A vast majority of the time those just get deleted. And besides, they're moderators.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Mar 29, 2012 at 22:04
  • 4
    @animuson And to be clear, I did say that what I'd like is the ability to flag a suggested edit for a moderator to make that conversion. Which is no different than when I flag a non-answer that's clearly intended to be a comment and it gets converted.
    – LessPop_MoreFizz
    Commented Mar 29, 2012 at 22:21
  • 6
    @animuson We're allowing low-rep and even anonymous users to change other people's posts under supervision, why would allowing comments under the same conditions be worse?
    – Kevin
    Commented Mar 29, 2012 at 23:18
  • To the same end but unrelated: I'm confused why users have to achieve a minimum rep (I think it's 20 or 50) before being allowed to post a comment.
    – M.Babcock
    Commented Mar 30, 2012 at 0:06
  • @Kevin edits are to improve content, and the workflow promotes that, not adding your own content. Anonymous comments would almost certainly mostly be chatty, me-too, spam ect. If they have an actual answer, they can give an answer unregistered
    – Zelda
    Commented Apr 24, 2012 at 3:01
  • 1
    @ben The problem is that many of the invalid anonymous edits should be comments that do add something to an answer. Besides, remember these are mostly found by 5ks going through the edit queue, what makes you think they'll approve "chatty, me-too, spam etc" comments?
    – Kevin
    Commented Apr 24, 2012 at 3:18
  • 1
    why don't you simply post the answer as an anonymous user (in incognito mode)? That's the intended effect anyway, right?
    – Lorem Ipsum
    Commented May 23, 2012 at 21:33

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