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Following a previous question, I would like to request a small feature change.

Context

Currently, when low-reputation community members suggest a post edit it is reviewed by peers. If the suggestion is rejected, the rejection reasons are listed. Here's two examples:

This edit is too minor; suggested edits should be substantive improvements addressing multiple issues in the post.

This edit is incorrect or an attempt to reply to or comment on the existing post.

Rejection reasons allow constructive feedback as to why the suggestion was refused and allows community members to, hopefully, learn from their mistake.

Point of failure

The following scenario, unlike the previous examples, offers no such feedback of any sort. The editor is left wondering what he/she did wrong.

  1. UserABC (rep < 2000) reviews a post of new comer UserXYZ.
  2. UserABC's suggestion awaits for peer review.
  3. Before the suggestion has a chance to be reviewed, UserXYZ edits their post.
  4. New, clumsy, and perhaps a little confused, UserXYZ (unintentionally?) dismisses UserABC's suggestion and continue editing their post.
  5. UserABC's suggestion is marked as "Rejected" but without any reasons.

Why is this a problem

If you tried to copy a file on your hard drive, receiving the all-too-common message "An error has occurred!" isn't very helpful. In fact, it's downright aggravating because it doesn't inform you of what you can do differently to solve the problem.

Similarly, simply stating "Rejected" is equally aggravating because it doesn't accurately inform the editor what occurred and what could be done differently.

Potential Solution

Offering the simple following message avoids any confusion:

The original post was edited before your suggestion could be reviewed by peers and has been superseded.

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  • Apparently, I am not the only one who is stumped by this lack of explanation : meta.stackexchange.com/q/131702 Commented May 8, 2012 at 23:59
  • I don't follow why you need all the context. Community never provides a rejection reason. It just so happens that in some cases it is the only user that rejects and thus no reason is provided at all. Basically you're asking for Community to determine the reason for rejection. While it may be possible for this specific instance, it's not possible in other instances. There just seems to be tons of filler text in this post that's not needed. Commented May 9, 2012 at 0:43
  • Perhaps if Community rejects it the reason should be "Discarded". Commented May 9, 2012 at 1:45
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    @animuson "Community never provides a rejection reason" is not a reason. It, like any machine/program, can be made/designed to behave in any way by its author(s). I'm pretty sure it doesn't randomly rejects things, there must be some coded reasoning behind it… and shielding members from this particular scenario serves nothing but to confuse and irritate them. Commented May 9, 2012 at 1:52
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    @animuson If I did wrong, I need to know. If not, give me the gist of what happened. You see this kind of behaviour everywhere: It's rudimentary in any relationship, whether its human-to-human or human-to-machine. It's why someone wants to know why they're being dumped by a girl/guy; Why you need to explain why you're scolding a child; Why error messages annoy you when they are too vague; Why a couple of years back iOS developers were complaining they didn't know why their app wasn't admitted to the store; etc. This is basic psychology! Commented May 9, 2012 at 1:55
  • Community only rejects things when other users tell it too, mainly when improving posts. You can't just attach some general "post was improved" notice to it because that's just as useless as not providing a reason at all. It doesn't tell them why that user rejected it. There are better solutions behind the problem. See Allow adding a reject reason when marking an edit as “not helpful” in the improve screen. Rejection reasons aren't there to explain the inadequacies of the system that caused its rejection. They're only for actual reasons. Commented May 9, 2012 at 3:34

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