up vote 4 down vote favorite

Most of the wikis I've used have "minor edit" checkbox which you can check when you're editing post. When you check it, the edited post doesn't come back on front page after this edit.

Here we discourage minor edits, because "they are obfuscating front page", so there are many posts/questions/answers with tiny bugs (typos, punctuation errors, etc.).

Of course there are some issues with this idea:

  • edits generate reputation point (minor edits don't have to - like they don't do it right now),
  • edits require storage space - that shouldn't be a problem since edits are stored as diffs (aren't they?) so minor edits won't do a big change

Any other issues?

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  • How do you decide what counts as a minor edit and what's a normal edit? – Bainternet Dec 17 '13 at 4:37
  • @Bainternet Author decides if it's minor. This won't create any problems because it has only 2 effects: no points for author and no promoting to front page. – Krzysiek Dróżdż Dec 17 '13 at 18:05
  • I'd like to change a lot of posts, remove typos and stuff, but I normally don't because of this. I'd like to see this feature. – Scuba Kay Jan 9 '14 at 12:08
up vote 3 down vote

What is minor and what is not is sometimes subjective. Tagging is a good example. If you have enough rep to apply your edits without a review, nobody could see and correct those changes anymore.

If you want to edit many posts, use a time with low activity. Weekends are usually the best time for that. Do not edit more than 10 posts in a row.

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  • Of course it is subjective and this edits should go through moderation as well. All they do is: a) not add any points (author decides it's minor) and b) not bring post to front page. – Krzysiek Dróżdż Dec 17 '13 at 18:04

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