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I haven't really been able to find a question that asks exactly this. Though Should we edit old, non-interesting questions? is a close match.

Recently I've had quite some edits in the review queue for (really) old questions (an example would be Partition hidden after installation of linux). While I do think it's not particularly bad to remove the "fluff" from it, I don't really see much value in that edit.

How do you handle it? Am I missing some kind of policy in regard to this? Personally I'd rather reject an edit for old questions that just do minor tweaks like removing a thanks or hi.

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    I tend to reject them too. I think the upswing is due to people trying to get a hat.
    – Burgi
    Commented Dec 14, 2017 at 10:34
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    For a while I rejected edits that weren’t really beneficial, and the vast majority of the time I saw that two other people had approved them.  This has been happening all year; it’s not just a WinterBash thing.   I guess the consensus of the site — or at least of the active reviewers — is that edits that aren’t harmful and show the slightest hint of an improvement to a post should be approved. Commented Dec 16, 2017 at 3:13
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I'm of the school that we take improvements where we can get them. So, if someone wants to go through old posts and remove signatures and salutations, I'm not going to stop them. They're outside the recommended style for the site, so while small, these edits do benefit the posts and the site as a whole.

But if there are lots of other blatant problems with the post that have been ignored by the editor, use your discretion -- either use the Reject and Improve button or the Accept and Improve button. It may slow down your reviewing, but taking the time to improve these posts in the review queue when you see the problem is part of reviewing posts.

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