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What's the stance on edits where the only real change is deleting, "Thanks for the help in advance," or similar? I think it'd be best if the OP didn't write them in the first place but I typically mark them as 'no improvement whatsoever'. I think several users farm points in the Suggested Edits queue by removing these throwaway sentences, sometimes overlooking substantive errors or places for improvement in the post/title.

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    $\begingroup$ Related: Editing to remove a “Thank you” in a post. $\endgroup$ – Martin Sleziak Aug 30 at 16:33
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    $\begingroup$ @MartinSleziak I think that's outdated. $\endgroup$ – quid Aug 30 at 23:27
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    $\begingroup$ I've recently encountered a suggested editor that has, more than once, edited only to add: "Please help me," "Thank you for your assistance", etc. Editing only to add, or subtract salutations is inappropriate. $\endgroup$ – amWhy Aug 31 at 2:40
  • $\begingroup$ Because I am quite new here. Whenever, someone says something useful to me, I feel grateful for their help and time. Even if they did not exactly solved my problem, I still feel grateful for their effort to help me. So why it's bad pointing out that? (please can someone explain to me, if it has to do with academics or anything) $\endgroup$ – brucebanner Sep 3 at 8:16
  • $\begingroup$ As someone who is reading a lot here, I find it quite annoying to see information unrelated to the question, especially I cannot avoid it without first reading it. If someone leaves a useful comment, upvote their comment. If someone answer your question and you find it useful, upvote and accept the answer. $\endgroup$ – Arctic Char Sep 3 at 8:40
  • $\begingroup$ The site is set up as a Question&Answer (Q&A) site: the aim is that a user can find the question they have (or one sufficiently close) and look up an/the answer. Typically such answers do not have "thank-you" or other non-answer related text in them (look at any FAQ you care to find on the web). Upvotes and answer acceptance can, and probably should, be construed as "thank-you" from people who were helped. $\endgroup$ – postmortes Sep 3 at 8:59
  • $\begingroup$ It is an inexplicable dehumanising preoccupation as though politeness is to be frowned upon. However, answers & questions can have intolerable diction, spelling & grammar and that is acceptable. Go figure, as they say. $\endgroup$ – copper.hat Sep 10 at 4:49
  • $\begingroup$ I don't think anyone here is against anyone else for being grateful. The only point of issue is the way one shows their gratitude, and whether or not it interferes with others. Since I've not seen it mentioned, I'll point out that a lot of people are inclined to leave their thanks as comments, which are out of the way from posts. Although it is debatable whether these comments are 'on-topic' or 'too conversational', I don't think anyone is really against this medium for saying "thanks". $\endgroup$ – Simply Beautiful Art Sep 11 at 17:42
  • $\begingroup$ @SimplyBeautifulArt I am infinitesimally prone to exaggeration. $\endgroup$ – copper.hat Sep 11 at 20:17
  • $\begingroup$ I have no problem with people farming rep. Rep is there to encourage wanted behaviours - like removing undesirable parts of questions. $\endgroup$ – samerivertwice Sep 14 at 18:04
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The general policy is that edits, especially suggested edits, should be somewhat complete. For "thanks" specifically here is an old post Is it Discouraged to Write 'Thanks' at the end of one's Post? that says not to edit only for removing that (there is likely still some room for doing it as a normal edit for 'active' posts, but that's a detail).

Thus, yes, if you come across suggested edits that just remove "thanks" and do nothing else, in particular on old posts and in numbers, you can reject them.

That said, I would not give too much weight to this farming points aspect. First, the points one can get that way is really not enormous and it is easy enough to get points in different ways. Thus, I don't see how it is a big issue even if it would happen. Second, framing it in this way just sours the debate. It's also possible somebody does that in good faith and thinks they do something good. Then not only do we tell them they wasted their time because we consider those improvements as too minor, in addition we tell them that we think they do so for bad reasons. That's a model case of adding insult to injury.

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    $\begingroup$ "if you come across suggested edits that just remove "thanks" and do nothing else, in particular on old posts and in numbers, you can reject them." Or, you could improve them, if you find something else in the post that cries out for editing. $\endgroup$ – Gerry Myerson Aug 30 at 22:26
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    $\begingroup$ I agree. I meant "can" in the sense that it is a valid option. $\endgroup$ – quid Aug 31 at 8:33

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