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I know that particular post is likely to be deleted - downvoted it myself hoping this will help driving it away faster. Note I am not 100% certain since I am not the one making delete decisions.

Still my eyes were hurt by spelling mistakes and I suggested this edit.

Edit has been rejected with the explanation:

Post is closed and will be deleted. I don't see a reason to edit it (any edit reputation will be lost, as you know).

Is above a good reason to reject a suggested edit?


https://i.stack.imgur.com/4gkDG.png

2 Answers 2

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I'm on the fence personally. I don't see much harm here and usually edit minor issues like this on posts when I close them.

For the most part closed posts should be improved of course, but this post was doomed to get a score of -4 or lower (making it vanish from the front page) and closed. A combination of those two means it's going to be automatically deleted (closed -1 posts with no answers get auto-deleted after a month).

It's a good faith edit, so I wouldn't want to discourage that in and of itself, but at the same time posts clearly going to the scrapyard might be better off left alone (with a comment explaining why).

As for the suggested edit rep...I actually don't know if you keep it or lose it.

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  • I was once told at MSO that suggested edit rep, as well as count for editing badges progress is lost when post is deleted. As for the score, if memory serves my downvote (cast prior to edit) made it -6
    – gnat
    Aug 20, 2012 at 13:37
  • @gnat guess that's as good a reason as any then; at least with the rejection reason (if you actually see it) is a good warning
    – Rarity
    Aug 20, 2012 at 13:37
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    @gnat are you referring to this?
    – yoozer8
    Aug 20, 2012 at 16:02
  • exactly! thanks @Jim
    – gnat
    Aug 20, 2012 at 16:11
  • @Rarity I just re-checked - almost 4 days later, post still hangs in there, perfectly visible eg through career-development tag, #6 in active questions list. As far as I can tell it even somehow got one undownvote. Given that wouldn't it really be better to edit it back then - since it's fate to deletion turned out err not so fateful?
    – gnat
    Aug 24, 2012 at 19:12
  • @gnat the auto-deletion script is very conservative; it's a month for downvoted, closed, answerless posts
    – Rarity
    Aug 24, 2012 at 19:24
  • @Rarity I see. A month for auto-deletion makes me feel quite uncomfortable about that edit rejection. Please note I am not suggesting to edit it now - it seems too late, no need to bump it
    – gnat
    Aug 24, 2012 at 19:29
  • @gnat it's still doomed...Just takes a while to disappear. It's not visible on the front page after it gets a net of -4 votes so I wouldn't worry too much about it
    – Rarity
    Aug 24, 2012 at 19:39
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    @Rarity sure. But if it takes a month it makes much better sense to allow edit than to reject imNSho. The way I see it it's a simple matter of separation of concerns: edits go their way, deletion goes its way. Presence of badly mis-spelled post damages site image for all the time it's visible (month at least) - what is achieved by blocking its cleanup, simply escapes me
    – gnat
    Aug 24, 2012 at 20:43
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I disagree completely with the reject reason. First, the person who rejected the edit was not a moderator and has no crystal ball. Therefore, it's impossible for that person to really know without a doubt that the post was going to be deleted.

Secondly, deleted content on Stack Exchange sites is not really completely removed from the system. On beta sites, any user with at least 2,000 reputation can see deleted posts. Now, I've seen cases where a question was closed or deleted simply because some blatant grammatical and spelling issues made the question appear to be very low quality, when in fact making an edit to clean things up a bit helped expose the ways the question could be further improved and made to fit the guidelines of the site.

Lastly, as I mentioned previously, making edits to questions that are closed or deleted help eliminate unnecessary distractions that prevent users from seeing them in their true light. However, it also has the opposite effect for questions that really, truly do have no value. Anyone with 2,000 reputation or higher who sees the deleted question will know that it wasn't hastily deleted and that effort was made to improve it.

The Stack Exchange community team has emphasized that a good first step on any closed question is to first edit the spelling and grammar to see the posts more clearly. Is getting a clearer picture of a question that, at face value appears to be a broken window, really not what we want to encourage out of our user base, just because of a couple reputation points?

Post is closed and will be deleted. I don't see a reason to edit it (any edit reputation will be lost, as you know).

With that said, it's clear that this question has no value here, edited or not, but are the high rep users on this site who have the power to reject edits really that worried about someone else gaining +2 reputation for trying to improve the site? If we make this about rep, we discourage healthy behaviors. If someone is trying to improve the site, judge their actions based on that.

It is not enough that I win, everyone else must lose....

-- Genghis Khan

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  • Eh, don't need a crystal ball to know that a post scoring less than -4 which is closed, unanswered, and blatantly off topic will be deleted. It would have been automatically deleted, and editing wouldn't have ever saved it.
    – Rarity
    Aug 27, 2012 at 13:28
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    @Rarity - Sure, I don't disagree the post can't be saved, and I even mentioned that in the last paragraph. My point is that the reason the reviewer rejected the edit was purely about rep, and it shouldn't be.
    – jmort253
    Aug 27, 2012 at 14:38

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