-2

I recently 'incorrectly' approved an edit on SO. Because of this incorrect review I've been banned from reviewing for 5 days.

Granted, I got this review wrong, however the link in the hijacked edit pointed to a relevant blog posting on C++ structs. Additionally, I regularly review on SO and spend much care making the judgments I do.

Here is the message I got when I just now went to review more posts:

You voted to approve https://stackoverflow.com/review/suggested-edits/6609315 which clearly inappropriately hijacked a post to promote their own blog.

Come back in 5 days to continue reviewing.

Isn't a 5 day ban on reviewing a little harsh for such a mistake?

6
  • 2
    Why do you think a ban less than a week is harsh? What do you propose instead moderators use to get your attention long enough to teach you about spam being edited in?
    – Martijn Pieters
    Commented Dec 30, 2014 at 12:24
  • 9
    No it isn't. You effectively approved someone trying to edit spam into a question. Spam edits are far worse than spam questions (or spam answers) because they are much harder to detect unless caught initially
    – psubsee2003
    Commented Dec 30, 2014 at 12:24
  • 1
    Well, propose a better alternative. "You can't have a cookie for 5 days" doesn't quite cut it.
    – Hans Passant
    Commented Dec 30, 2014 at 12:33
  • 5
    Looking at that edit, I'd say 5 days is lenient.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Commented Dec 30, 2014 at 12:43
  • 5
    I agree entirely that the review ban is appropriate here; but I also appreciate the productive way you have asked and accepted the answer to this question. Have a plussie.
    – Andrew Barber
    Commented Dec 30, 2014 at 14:26
  • 1
    I wanted to ask the same thing you did, because I have been banned without the option to answer that ban asking - "why exactly?". But because the edit you entered here has been a 'victim' of the same person that I approved in other edit, I can now see that both me and you fell into a trap of that user. Lesson learned - check the dates of the edited answers - I didn't do it before and now I can see they were from '11 and '08 ("There is something rotten in the state of Denmark"). And also all the arguments CodeCaster mentioned...
    – Michal
    Commented Jan 5, 2015 at 11:47

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
14

It's a link to an uncanonical, unofficial blog (1) edited poorly (2) into someone else's answer (3) of five years old (4), while the review is clearly marked "Our system has identified this edit as possible spam; please review carefully" (5).

You simply cannot approve such an edit containing so many hints of being wrong, so I think the punishment is justified.

By asking this question, you seem to think it's valid to include links to external sites in answers.

This is only the case if:

  1. The link is canonical or official (documentation, blogs from the creators of the technology being used, or well-known sites if either of the former lacks), or
  2. The relevant portion of the text behind the link is included in the answer (Are answers that just contain links elsewhere really "good answers"?) and
  3. When the editor including the link is the author of the article, they must disclose that.

When an edit suggested to someone else's answer doesn't fall into either category, it must be rejected, and even #2 (edits adding a link and some quote from said link) should be treated very suspiciously.

3
  • 6
    Fair enough. Thanks for the well thought out response.
    – JSK NS
    Commented Dec 30, 2014 at 12:42
  • 1
    (6) the link is obviously irrelevant to both the question and the answer.
    – Shog9
    Commented Dec 30, 2014 at 23:53
  • @Shog I didn't bother to click it, the slug seemed slightly relevant.
    – CodeCaster
    Commented Dec 30, 2014 at 23:55

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .