I recently reached 2000 reputation and earned the privilege to review more posts, including suggested edits. I've been reviewing a little here and there. But every time I go to the review queue lately (last two or three days), at least one of the posts for review is a test to "see if I'm paying attention". There are usually no more than seven posts in the queue, and I usually skip over those posts when I am unsure if the edit is useful or not.

Is this how it is for new reviewers? Or does everyone get tested this often? Will the occurrence of the tests slowly decrease as I gain reputation? Or is it the speed in which I review the posts that prompts a test? Finally, what happens if I fail a test?

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If it's any consolation, the same thing happens to me. It somewhat discourages one from performing review activities. I suspect there's quite a bit of folks clicking through just for the points/badges, tho. –  hrbrmstr Apr 22 '14 at 3:19
    
Why on earth does it discourage you? It should encourage you to know that the people who are gaming the system are being weeded out as much as possible, leaving your good efforts more worthwhile. It's not like it costs you much! –  GreenAsJade Jan 8 at 21:41

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up vote 15 down vote accepted

It's random, based on how many reviews you're doing. If you suddenly gain access to a new queue and are doing more reviews, that'll increase your chances of being audited, but it's still random - and sometimes, folks get, uh, lucky (sic) and find themselves reviewing a whole heapin' pile of audits.

If you fail enough of them (where the value of "enough" depends on which queue you're in, how fast you're reviewing, etc.) you'll be asked to take a short break from review. If you come back and continue failing after the break, the next "break" will be longer, up to 30 days.

Generally-speaking, treat audits as a reminder not to get in a rut: the UI for review was designed to allow very fast processing of fairly large amounts of information, which is usually a good thing - but it can tend to make one complacent, particularly when faced with a string of similar posts. Occasionally, you may find an audit you disagree with: that's ok - in a community as diverse as Stack Overflow, it's common to find areas where you disagree with others as to what policy should be in a given scenario. If a given audit strikes you as particularly egregious, feel free to bring it up here.

For more details, see: What are review tests (audits) and how do they work?

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