Why was this suggested edit rejected? Should I quit submitting (some kind of) edits?

Question

I noticed a suggested edit of mine got rejected by Willeke♦, and he says "The edit does not improve the quality of the post. Changes to the content are unnecessary or make the post more confusing."

The main point of my edit was to fix "once" to "one" (a typo). I also changed "potential" into "potential risk". Doesn't that improve the quality of the post? The change is neither confusing nor unnecessary in my view. Perhaps one could argue about one of the changes, but not about the other.

1. Why didn't the person who rejected fixed at least the obvious, clear typo?
2. Is it better to have typos in the site you moderate than to fix them?
3. If not, why was my edit rejected?
4. Are non-established members or editors treated dismissively? Because — I'm sorry to say it — I read that reject message as: "I can't even be bothered to write a proper or minimally cordial rejection message that at least actually explains the reason of the rejection." I would expect more from moderation.

Answer 1

I think the proposed edit should have been approved. Addressing some of the concerns raised in the other answer:

• (concern that your edit prevents other from editing): If another user with the edit privilege wants to edit then they can review the proposed edit, approve or reject it and pass their own edit without having to wait for a second reviewer. This dialog opens right from the edit button, there's no need for them to go to the review queue directly.

  • Only users without the editing privilege will have to wait, but with a handful of suggested edits daily, the wait shouldn't be too long on Travel.SE. There weren't any other suggested edits to this answer, so the concern that others were prevented from improving the post more substantially seems moot.

• (discouraging minor edits): I don't think that makes a lot of sense either. Proposing edits is accessible for a reason*, it's allowed even if you don't have an account. I think the keyword here is improvement. Fixing a mistake improves the post, even if it's minor. Another way to look at this would be to reason that many minor mistakes are worth fixing. And though there is only one mistake here, the question has over 10,000 views meaning many more readers will have seen it.

As such, I don't think the rejection reason makes a lot of sense here. With this meta post, even more users have spent time on this and what everyone agrees is a real mistake has only been corrected after raising it on meta.

As a community, I think we should not discourage users from proposing edits even if they are minor. After a few rejections, would you bother proposing another edit even if it's more substantial this time around?

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* Let's have another look at Jeff Atwood's blog post about Stack Overflow; it said the following about editing:

I'm continually amazed at the number of people, even on Hacker News today, who don't realize that every single question and answer is editable on Stack Overflow, even as a completely anonymous user who isn't logged in. Which makes sense, right, because Stack Overflow is a wiki, and that's how wikis work. Anyone can edit them. Go ahead, try it right now if you don't believe me — press the "improve this answer" or "improve this question" button on anything that can be improved, and make it so.

Answer 2

As a new to this site user, if not Stack exchange as a whole, you are asked not to do minor edits.

I saw and still see this as minor edits. And while I see the 'once' as a real mistake, I am not sure adding 'risk' is needed at all.

Yours was one of three suggested edits in the queue and I rejected two as 'too minor for someone who is new to Travel Stack Exchange'.

We can not write long explanations for all decisions, mostly we tick the most appropriate out of a list of options.

And remember, you are not the only one who can edit, if it is not your question or answer and the edit is only one or two words, do not edit as long as your edits go into queue for approval. As it is very likely that a high rep user comes along and edits, but they can not do so if your edit is in waiting for approval.

Answer 3

Why was this suggested edit rejected?

For no good reasons, as the other 2 answers mentioned.

Should I quit submitting (some kind of) edits?

If you value your time, yes. It's likely not worth your time spending 10 minutes trying to change 2 characters because of bad moderation or bad reviewers.

Note that this minor edit rule does not have any merit in a huge site like Stack Overflow either, because it's common to have a bug caused by a 1-char typo. Many bugs are left uncorrected because of the minor edit rule.