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Right now, if I try to edit a post and my edits are deemed "minor" (fewer than 6 characters), the edit cannot be submitted. I understand this is the case in all SE sites. However specifically in language oriented sites, very short edits (even 1 character) may be important enough. For example, in this question: Different words for "German" in Russian? word "немецкий" is misspelled as "неметский" - yet I couldn't submit an edit, because it was too short.

Maybe in language-specific sites (and Russian in this case specifically) we should allow shorter edits exactly for this reason: fix misspellings. In language sites, spelling is a lot more important than in math- or programming-related ones, for example.

I understand the reasoning behind not allowing short edits, so it may not be this easy; maybe we would need to find some balance, for example, allow short edits to only users with reputation on the site above a certain number.

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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I'm torn between saying this is and .

We have no plans to relax the minimum edit requirement for suggested edits. However, users with enough reputation are able to just make edits without having to get them approved. As this site grows, there will soon be users who can do that.

While this site's in private beta, users with 500+ rep can make edits outright. For public beta sites, the required reputation is bumped up to 1,000 and on graduated sites, it's 2,000.

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  • Do you mean users with enough reputation will be able to make even small edits?
    – KCd
    Jun 17, 2012 at 4:25
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    @KCd Yes, exactly. Here's the full description of the privilege: russian.stackexchange.com/privileges/edit
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Jun 17, 2012 at 4:27
  • @KCd In order to check privileges that you achieved in general, just add /privileges to the site's URL. On the right, those with 100% are your privileges. The others will slowly rise as your rep rises and eventually reach 100%
    – Alenanno
    Jun 17, 2012 at 9:29
  • Ok, then I guess it is "status-completed". I wasn't asking for an outright ability to make trivial edits but rather for users with sufficiently high reputation to do so. If users with high rep can do it, then, I guess, my request is technically approved.
    – Aleks G
    Jun 17, 2012 at 11:01
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I fully agree. I was thinking about it as well, and as a work-around can suggest adding an update note at the bottom of the OP. However it's not a brilliant solution of course. It would be ideal to have this feature admin-only, provided that we have enough active and competent admins.

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  • You're suggesting a solution that you don't see as brilliant yourself? :P
    – Alenanno
    Jun 16, 2012 at 19:01
  • @Alenanno Yes, I am offering a work-around as long as there is no real solution. And stressing that don't consider this workaround a good solution.
    – texnic
    Jun 16, 2012 at 20:49
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Is there something else you can fix? Or improve some wording? It's not that hard to reach six characters, if you think about it. Just changing a question so that it still means the same thing, but has a different wording, will be fine.

In any case, it has been denied so I don't think they'll make an exception for us, unless you really find compelling arguments.

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  • Well, in that question, it says "by low rep users". I'm suggesting quite the opposite: still disallow low rep users to make trivial edits, but allow high rep users to do so.
    – Aleks G
    Jun 16, 2012 at 19:15
  • I really don't like finding five things that don't need fixing and changing them to get through my change that only needed one thing fixed. It encourages 5 more trivial changes in an effort to avoid trivial edits.
    – hippietrail
    Jun 16, 2012 at 20:14
  • It was denied, but in general, and this could be different for such language-specific site.
    – Danubian Sailor
    Jun 16, 2012 at 20:28
  • @lechlukasz A typo's a typo regardless of the site.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Jun 16, 2012 at 23:30
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    Sometimes on beta sites I just leave a comment to the OP about the spelling or typing mistake, then delete the comment when they've fixed it.
    – hippietrail
    Jun 17, 2012 at 7:11
  • @hippietrail That's another way, I use comments too. :)
    – Alenanno
    Jun 17, 2012 at 9:28

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