48

This pointless and wrong edit got three approve votes (in 2, 6 and 20 minutes) and no rejects. I rolled it back, because it breaks the code.

What is the proper action to let the reviewers know they were mistaken, and ask them to be more careful in the future? Is there a way to make them be more careful in the future?

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  • 1
    Good question, but if there was a way, given the amount of time those reviews have been a problem, we would have found it. IIRC the current consensus is "meh, audits should solve the problem". – Frédéric Hamidi Sep 20 '14 at 15:14
  • It happens. But not very often as I hope. You've done the right thing by rolling back and I believe you could ping them with a comment. – VMai Sep 20 '14 at 15:14
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    @VMai, not very often as I hope. You must be joking. – Frédéric Hamidi Sep 20 '14 at 15:15
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    For really bad cases you could flag for moderator attention. Just us an "other" flag on the post itself and link to the review. Other than that, there's not a whole lot you can do. Yeah, you could go and ping the reviewers in other locations, but that's just messy. – Bart Sep 20 '14 at 15:15
  • @Bart I did that once in another case, had to chase through several locations and monitor for responses... (not everyone use the at-sign believe it or not). I was thinking more in terms of putting them on hold (for reviews) for a week or something. Or is it too harsh? – Will Ness Sep 20 '14 at 15:18
  • @FrédéricHamidi Can I request an audit on this review, and if so, how? – Will Ness Sep 20 '14 at 15:24
  • @FrédéricHamidi I'm an optimist. I know that pointless edits that don't touch code will get approved too often, but I really hope that edits that touch code will be generally reviewed more carefully. – VMai Sep 20 '14 at 15:25
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    @Will, review audits do not work like that. That said, repeated behavior like the one you mention usually does mean failed audits and subsequent review bans, yes. But again, the problem is not as much to find how to prevent a single user from misreviewing, as to prevent the whole of them at the same time from making a mess of the system. There is a scaling effect there we cannot ignore, and singling out users has not be proven to work (yet). – Frédéric Hamidi Sep 20 '14 at 15:25
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    Wrong edit notwithstanding, if that's supposed to be Java, it won't compile. – Matthew Lundberg Sep 21 '14 at 0:37
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    photo_tom has approved 203 edit suggestions and rejected 0 edit suggestions that explains a lot ;) – Theolodis Sep 22 '14 at 12:30
  • Related: How to educate folks on site policy sans contact?. – jww Sep 22 '14 at 19:25
  • We need more variety in the SE audits. I've seen many reviewers who hit "Reject" only on the audits. And at least some of them truly believe they are doing the right thing. – S.L. Barth Sep 23 '14 at 7:51
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    There are 3 main reasons why people approve things that shouldn't be approved: 1. They do not understand what has been written and are not competent enough to approve or reject it, so they just pick one (regardless of whether they know it's right or not); 2. They're just trolling; 3. They're on a roll and totally space-out. – jay_t55 Sep 23 '14 at 8:37
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    @Chris: Are we sure? If you dig through to How do comment @ replies work, the text that answer linked to has changed in a relevant way. It now says "You can explicitly notify [a] user if...their name appears anywhere in the revision history (only those who have commented will show up in the auto-complete dialog though)" Reviewers appear in the revision history. (I've added a comment question there, asking.) – T.J. Crowder Sep 23 '14 at 8:56
  • @T.J.Crowder I've looked again at the revision history and the reviewers names aren't immediately there. one has to follow a link to see them. – Will Ness Sep 23 '14 at 9:07
29

Moderators can give reviewers a bit of guidance the next time they try to review - I've done this. We've discussed the notion of enabling this for skilled reviewers as well, creating a better feedback loop within the system itself - that's something I'd like to try once I'm confident that we're able to empower good reviewers in other ways.

There's someone else you should be offering feedback to as well though: the editor. You can leave comments for editors like so:

@kafee651: your edit altered the behavior of this answer without a reasonable explanation for why it was an improvement. Please see Will's comments and this meta discussion.

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    iwannadisputeUI! Dispute an approval, auto-rollback, users who approved get more audits, and mods get notified after a few times to issue a ban. Or just auto-ban if I (or Unihedron) do it :) – bjb568 Sep 20 '14 at 16:27
  • I tried to leave a comment like you did, typed "@k" and there was no pop up name. I'm not sure if they get pinged when I just type their name like that, if it doesn't pop up on itself. (?) – Will Ness Sep 20 '14 at 16:49
  • 3
    Editor names don't autocomplete, @will - but they do notify. – Shog9 Sep 20 '14 at 17:10
  • @Shog9 great to know, thanks! so I get it that my option for now is just to flag. maybe what bjb568 said will be accepted one day... – Will Ness Sep 20 '14 at 17:31
  • @Shog9 Quick question: If a user makes a bad edit, it's rolled back and they're pinged in a comment telling them it's a bad edit, and they make the edit again... Should you flag it for a mod at that point? Or wait until they show more of a history of bad edits? This is assuming they've only made two or three edits total, and all are on the same post and are the same edit. – Kendra Sep 22 '14 at 19:17
  • @Kendra my two cents worth: what you describe is a bona fide edit war. I'd certainly flag it in such a case. – Will Ness Sep 22 '14 at 21:21
  • @WillNess I wasn't entirely sure how many repeat-edits constituted an edit war. Thanks. – Kendra Sep 22 '14 at 21:26
  • @Kendra I'd say two is already a war, if someone repeats a bad edit, after being reverted (and explained why). But it's just my opinion. – Will Ness Sep 22 '14 at 21:29
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    @WillNess You can see for yourself, really. I'm newer to flagging, so I was hesitant to flag this one when it's been brought up already, just the first edit. – Kendra Sep 22 '14 at 21:31
  • @Kendra triple wow! I was entirely unaware that was going on on the same answer I asked about! (was offline) That guy is persistent... (and doesn't let his misunderstanding of the code to stop him from editing). And it was approved, again and again!!! quadruple wow!! :) – Will Ness Sep 22 '14 at 21:36
  • @WillNess I just happened to look after the rollback and got curious. – Kendra Sep 22 '14 at 21:38
  • (I thought it was three edits, but there were only two, so, not as bad as I thought). – Will Ness Sep 22 '14 at 21:52
  • @Will: note that notifications work for editors but not reviewers. – Shog9 Sep 22 '14 at 23:17
  • @Kendra: moderators will be notified automatically if the problem persists, but you can flag if the editor is unwilling to listen to guidance. – Shog9 Sep 22 '14 at 23:18
  • @Shog9 : I've faced it today. stackoverflow.com/review/suggested-edits/12367755 . Unfortunately somehow I lost my rollback option since I opened the link. Finally I edited it to the original revision. I need moderation attention here, how can I do that ? – blackSmith May 16 '16 at 14:37

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