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I've just realized that while my current level of site permissions on one of the SE sites allows me to edit other people's questions and answers at will, it does not allow me to unilaterally approve other people's suggested edits. I must wait for a second approval before the edits are deployed. This is completely illogical.

Moreover, the pending approval blocks me from editing the question myself, locking it into a flawed state until someone else shows up to approve it.

It goes like this:

  1. A flawed question/answer is posted, in need of edits.
  2. A user without free editing privileges suggests the fixes.
  3. Someone who could have fixed the post outright notices this but can do nothing other than hit "approve."
  4. We have to sit and wait for someone else to show up to approve it, while in the meantime the post languishes.

Anyone with full editing privileges should be able to unilaterally approve edits, or else override them with their own edits. Posts should not be stuck in a state where they cannot be edited and require a second approval.

This was brought up 13 years ago and nothing was done. I've marked this as a bug rather than discussion because for all intents and purposes it is a bug. There is absolutely no logical reason for the feature to work in any other way.

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  • 5
    Redundancy of eyes on an edit forestalls individual error. In theory. Just because someone has great rep., doesn't mean they're not sloppy at reading/editing. (Maybe we should take away the unilateral edit privilege...)
    – W.O.
    Commented Mar 16 at 22:16
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    If you took away the unilateral editing privilege this network's general quality would nosedive so fast you'd hit the ceiling.
    – temporary_user_name
    Commented Mar 16 at 22:18
  • Yep. Damned if I know what the answer is, except to continue chipping away at the inconsistencies and hope SE has the manpower to implement some of the suggestions here before the AI takeover.
    – W.O.
    Commented Mar 16 at 22:21
  • Yes, after some thought, this question does make sense - there is a definite inconsistency (Rule should be: two people without edit privileges should be required to approve, but only one user who does have edit privileges should be required to approve). One way around this is to hit the "improve edit" button and just add a full stop to force the edit through, and then quickly remove the full stop in a subsequent edit (within 5 minutes). And, why is the linked question tagged as "status-completed" without there being a definitive answer provided explaining as to why the status is completed?
    – Greenonline
    Commented Mar 17 at 0:34
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    I'm afraid robo-reviewers who just click on approve all the time just to get badges are why we can't have nice things.
    – Robert Longson
    Commented Mar 17 at 0:43
  • 1
    But @RobertLongson how many users with edit privileges are also robo-reviewers? That must be an exquisitely tiny overlap, those who participated enough and were upvoted enough to get to 20k rep yet who "dont care about the site" and are mashing approve for badges. And surely you can detect that someone has a 100% approval rate and/or is hitting the option too fast to have realistically read through the proposed edit.
    – temporary_user_name
    Commented Mar 17 at 0:53
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    @temporary_user_name enough that it's a problem. Even a tiny percentage equates to lots of people at the scale of Stack Overflow. Such people are detected and banned but that's after they've done their damage. There's far more of them than Stack Overflow moderators so clean up is time consuming.
    – Robert Longson
    Commented Mar 17 at 1:24
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    Sorry, but bug is only for posts that report that something isn't working the way it's designed. If something's working as per the design and you want it changed, that's a feature change, even if (you believe) the design is flawed.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Mar 17 at 2:24
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    But you can unilaterally approve edits, via the approve & edit/'Improve Edit' button.
    – CPlus
    Commented Mar 17 at 5:31
  • @user16217248: Indeed. But it is sort of a hidden feature, either a usability bug or deliberate (only veteran (reviewers) will know about it in order to adhere to the spirit of reviews (no unilateral reviewer decisions)). The answer to the natural next question will be something like "This short-circuits the review and prevents others from automatically accepting bad edits."
    – This_is_NOT_a_forum
    Commented Mar 17 at 19:36
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    Related on Stack Overflow Meta: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/420349 (My answer there also includes some links back to Q&A here).
    – Karl Knechtel
    Commented Mar 17 at 21:30
  • @W.O. The solution is to tie the privilege - both to edit unilaterally and to approve unilaterally - to something that isn't reputation. Better yet; start over and redesign everything, because it's fundamentally flawed.
    – Karl Knechtel
    Commented Mar 17 at 21:40
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    @RobertLongson so... don't have the badge?
    – Karl Knechtel
    Commented Mar 17 at 22:28
  • @KarlKnechtel you could try making that feature request but the downside is there's not enough reviewing done now so we'd have to see whether that decreased it such that it we caused a different problem.
    – Robert Longson
    Commented Mar 17 at 23:09
  • @KarlKnechtel Maybe, but Robert Longtson's first comment gives pause to that thought.
    – W.O.
    Commented Mar 18 at 6:29

1 Answer 1

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Sometimes you can click on "improve edit" and then proceed unilaterally, whereas "approve" requires two people.

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  • Is there a reason for the downvotes here?
    – Michael Hardy
    Commented Mar 30 at 16:10

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