15

I spotted an older community wiki question suddenly pop up in the active tab and started poking around to see what changed.

From what I can tell, it's a single user making extremely minor edits to many of the answers, most of which have a very low vote count:

https://stackoverflow.com/posts/13713420/revisions
https://stackoverflow.com/posts/24964916/revisions
https://stackoverflow.com/posts/27512317/revisions
https://stackoverflow.com/posts/236158/revisions
https://stackoverflow.com/posts/13713420/revisions
https://stackoverflow.com/posts/29007199/revisions
https://stackoverflow.com/posts/18151541/revisions
https://stackoverflow.com/posts/27125803/revisions
https://stackoverflow.com/posts/23486832/revisions
https://stackoverflow.com/posts/11652347/revisions
https://stackoverflow.com/posts/8457004/revisions
https://stackoverflow.com/posts/22460128/revisions

(The edits keep coming but I feel like I've listed enough here)

How should this be handled? Should the edits be rolled back?
I'd normally vote "too minor", but the edits don't offer me the ability to review them. They seem to have already been applied.

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    You may flag for moderator attention to stop a single user making too minor edits in series just to gain rep. – πάντα ῥεῖ Apr 29 '15 at 15:09
  • @πάνταῥεῖ - Do I flag the answer or the edit itself? I don't seem to have the ability to flag the edit, just source/edit/link. – Mr. Llama Apr 29 '15 at 15:10
  • @Mr.Llama Just flag one of the edited posts – Rizier123 Apr 29 '15 at 15:10
  • You make the problem clear in flagging the edited post. The moderators have access to the edit history as anyone else has. – πάντα ῥεῖ Apr 29 '15 at 15:11
  • @πάνταῥεῖ I can already hear it: I just wanted to improve the answer groan. You have to love those people which change 2 characters and say that they just wanted to improve the post – Rizier123 Apr 29 '15 at 15:12
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    For the record, the whole thread is Community Wiki, so there are no suggested edits. The 1.8k user can make an edit with no reviewers. – gunr2171 Apr 29 '15 at 15:12
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    Mr. Llama and @πάνταῥεῖ, just to point out, though the user has less than 2k rep, these are not suggested edits and therefore the user gains no rep from them due to all of the answers being Community Wiki, which anyone with any amount of rep can edit without being reviewed. – Kendra Apr 29 '15 at 15:13
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    @Rizier123 I don't believe them unless they have more than 2k rep. – πάντα ῥεῖ Apr 29 '15 at 15:13
  • @Kendra Good point, I didn't spot this. – πάντα ῥεῖ Apr 29 '15 at 15:14
  • @Kendra - Does that change how the situation should be handled? On a side note, do edits on community wiki questions count towards badges? – Mr. Llama Apr 29 '15 at 15:14
  • @πάνταῥεῖ Kinda right, but I still see a few people which are clearly hunting for the: Illuminator badge. And they change like a tag or so and then do a rollback or something stupid like this. Always fun to watch :) – Rizier123 Apr 29 '15 at 15:15
  • I would say it does change how the situation should be handled. As it's all on one question, only one question is being bumped by the edits. While it may get annoying to see the same question over and over again, it's far better than seeing dozens of old, inactive questions being bumped. I would say comment on one of the answers, pinging the editor, and explain that they should slow down on the edits as they are bumping the post. No need to involve a mod at this stage. No, community wiki edits do not count towards badges. – Kendra Apr 29 '15 at 15:17
  • A note on pinging the editor: While the name will not auto-populate when you start to ping the editor, it will still notify them if you manually type out their name. – Kendra Apr 29 '15 at 15:20
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    The user appears to have stopped now. Because the post is CW, the only thing they achieved is (negative) attention to their actions, no reputation is gained for the edits. – Martijn Pieters Apr 29 '15 at 15:25
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    It should be noted that I was wrong about community wiki edits counting towards badges. Seems I remembered ever so slightly wrong. Either way, all fixed now. – Kendra Apr 29 '15 at 15:47
13

Thanks for the heads-up, we have dealt with the user; they appeared to be trying to game the editing badges.

In future, feel free to flag such a post for moderator intervention and explain that a user appears to be making loads of minor edits to CW posts, and we'll take a look if an intervention is needed.

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    @TravisJ: once moderators were looking at the account we found other things beyond the editing that were of a more serious nature. The suspension was not handed out for the edits. – Martijn Pieters Apr 29 '15 at 15:52
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    Just an outsider looking in ;) Thanks for the clarification – Travis J Apr 29 '15 at 15:52
  • @Martijn Pieters, What does voting irregularities. mean? Or this cant be disclosed? – Shaunak D Apr 29 '15 at 16:05
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    @ShaunakD: just that. Voting that doesn't comply with the site rules (i.e. fraud, targeted voting, etc.). – Martijn Pieters Apr 29 '15 at 16:06

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