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So I reached the 500 milestone, and was granted the "privilege" of helping with review queues. In other words, given "tasks" like homework that I can't even complete because the system itself prevents it. That, or the incentive for others to complete their tasks is so low that my ability to contribute is hampered.

  1. Yesterday, I wasted 15 minutes of my day on my first "task" making some pertinent edits to a First Question, only to have the system block my attempt to submit the edits because another edit was pending approval. Wasted my time, thanks. Why didn't SO have the courtesy to notify me of the locked status before I wasted my time editing the question?

  2. Today, I wasted even more time after editing a First Answer, only to have the system reject it because I have "too many pending edits". Why didn't SO have the courtesy to notify me that I've reached my limit of pending edits before I wasted my time editing the question? So 6 edits and I'm basically f**ked? Mind you, it's been a day now, and only 2 edits have been approved. Clearly there's a motivation problem going on, as the lackluster participation from other community members is now clogging up other parts of the pipeline - like me.

review history

So essentially, Stack Overflow expects me to contribute by reviewing up to 160 first questions, first answers, and late answers per day in order to qualify for a "thank you" message. Only 6 of those can be edits, before I get thrown to the curb for being "too proactive". Now I'm po'd because I wasted time on an edit and have to leave the tab open and spam the submit button in a couple hours, since it's a shame to have the time I spent editing it wasted, except nobody else cares enough to actually approve or reject my edits.

Lastly, food for thought:

  1. Don't call these tasks. We're not in school, and we're not getting paid to do them.
  2. Don't make this look like a completion progress, especially when the system makes "filling up the bar" a futile endeavor.
  3. Don't tell me what to do, not when I'm doing it for free. A "please" would be nice.

review interface

[EDIT]: Aren't review queue edits the same as the suggested edits, and shouldn't they be handled in a similar manner the same way as the suggested edits? From the FAQs (emphasis mine):

If the queue is currently full, the system will produce an error message telling you that you can't currently submit a suggested edit. You will only get this error if you try to edit before you can access the editing form. (If you were able to open the editing form before the queue filled up, you will be allowed to submit your edit even if the queue is full.)

So either the system is broken, or FAQ's are grossly out of date, or a guest leaving a suggested edit gets preferential treatment over a contributor donating their time to submit a review edit.

Furthermore, upon additional reading, why is this even an issue, given these changes implemented back in 2012 and 2014?

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    "Why didn't SO have the courtesy to notify me of the locked status before I wasted my time editing the question?" most likely there wasn't a pending edit when you started. Commented Mar 20 at 10:50
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    "Don't tell me what to do" - I mean, you don't have to do it. Nobody's forcing you to. Commented Mar 20 at 10:52
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    @VLAZ Indeed - a problem that git solves, and I'm sure SO could also. Commented Mar 20 at 11:08
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    @F1Krazy no, obviously not. But it doesn't do anything to encourage voluntary participation, either. Commented Mar 20 at 12:00
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    Same issue when the edit queue is full: one spends time on the edit only to find out that saving the edit is not possible meta.stackexchange.com/q/348445/178179 Commented Mar 20 at 13:32
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    @FranckDernoncourt which shouldn't be the case either. Incidentally, I just updated my question with a reference to their FAQs on suggested the suggested edit queues. All pending edit actions should be handled the way suggested edits are (supposedly) handled. Commented Mar 20 at 13:38
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    I just would like to request for any 2k+ SO user reading this: Please take the time to review some suggested edits. Its among the quickest things to review (saying this as a user who was reviewed hundreds of suggested edits on other sites) and is actually very important to help sub 2k users be able to actually help review effectively. Commented Mar 20 at 14:03
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    @Starship Why would I? If I want to do boring unpaid busy-work I would go and do that on the open-source, non-profit alternative site. Why should I do boring unpaid busy-work for an American private company? Do you also go and clean bottles in a Coca Cola factory for free? Commented Mar 20 at 14:06
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    @Lundin If you don't even want to be on this site in the first place, then that's an entirely differently story. But Codidact (I use that's what you are talking about) is mostly a ghost town, SE is not. So, why would you devote your time to somewhere where you will help far less people? Commented Mar 20 at 14:08
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    @Starship I'm here because it is still at least somewhat interesting to participate in the Q&A content of the sites. And by your logic, you'll be helping more people by cleaning bottles for free in the Coca Cola factory, since far more people drink Coca Cola than those who participate on SO. Btw I suspect that Coca Cola will actually appreciate if you show up and work for free for them. Maybe you'll even get a soda or two as thanks for all the hard work. Commented Mar 20 at 14:11
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    @Lundin Look, yeah. If had the choice between helping Coca Cola and helping a company which has basically no customers, I'd help Coca Cola. Commented Mar 20 at 14:14
  • @Lundin that's SE's business: turning people's goodwill into money (which used to be ok for me when data dumps were conveniently provided for free under CC BY-SA but it's not the case anymore). And SE seems to have always relied on new users replacing older users who leave due to various issues, so they don't bother making everything well optimized. Commented Mar 20 at 16:19

2 Answers 2

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7

This is because the privilege and review queue system is broken.

A reasonably new privilege access review queues has apparently been added in recent years, for 500 rep users to review first posts and late answers. It is not very smart to grant this privilege to users who do not have full edit privileges, earned at 2000 rep.

As a result, the edit you do when reviewing a first post or late answer will get pushed into the suggested edits review queue, which requires reviews by users with >2000 rep. And if that review queue is full, you get the message "too many pending edits". It is not you that have too many pending edits, it is the site as whole. Because nobody wants to do reviews any longer.

So by , a first post will generate a review which will in turn generate yet another review by up to 3 other users. We have reviews generating reviews. The only thing missing is someone reviewing the guys who review the review...

The obvious quick fix is to make all reviews available at 2000 rep only, like it used to be. By lowering the rep bar to 500 for some review queues, we are creating more review work. That is stupid.

Furthermore, as have been mentioned many times: if you have a queue system and the queues are never empty at any time, then it doesn't matter what queue size you set - the queue will get full. Since the pace in which the queue empties is slower than the pace that new items end up in the queue. This too is a flawed design.

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    Access Review Queues is not really new...its quite old actually. And too many pending edits could either be that you personally have more than 5 pending edits or the site as a whole has reached the suggested edits cap. Commented Mar 20 at 14:06
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    @Starship If you have full edit privileges, as common sense suggests that any reviewer ought to have, then you cannot have personal pending edits. All of which is gained at 2000 rep, as it turns out. Commented Mar 20 at 14:08
  • What common sense says that to you. You might wish to know that some of the most frequent reviewers in the 500 queues are sub 2k (ex. me, Zeros N Ones, Samcodes, CKE, and many many more) Commented Mar 20 at 14:13
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    @Starship And then you wonder why the suggested edit queue is constantly full... Commented Mar 20 at 14:14
  • Users have a max of 5 suggested edits at once. So it would take 100 such users. There aren't that many. Commented Mar 20 at 14:15
  • And that's like saying "lets all stop VTCing so the close votes queue gets less full" Commented Mar 20 at 14:15
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    ...will get pushed into the suggested edits review queue So if it's treated like a suggested edit, why the heck isn't the pending queue handling treated like a suggested edit? Or is the FAQ's page inaccurate? Commented Mar 20 at 14:17
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    @Starship It takes between 50 and 150 users to empty the suggested edit queue though, if they all do 20 reviews each (500 reviews, 2-3 users per post, 1000 to 1500 reviews, divide by 20). So if you have a100 of 500 rep users filling the queue, we need another 100 of 2000 rep users clearing it. And that's not even taking in account the vast majority of suggested edits generated the normal way. Commented Mar 20 at 14:25
  • @Lundin Which is why when its more full you can do 40 reviews...and you did the math totally wrong by the way also. About 30 users could clear the queue in a day. But realeastically 500 edits aren't suggested a day, so really a lot less. Commented Mar 20 at 14:27
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    @Lundin ...we are creating more review work...that is stupid Not exactly. A suggested review afaik only needs 2 2k+ rep users to select a bubble and click next (akin to triage). The problem isn't in giving sub-2k rep users review privileges (which is a good idea). The problem is in having a system that doesn't work with us to make the process seamless, resulting in decreased user involvement, which further exacerbates the problem. Case in point, my 5 or 6 edits are still pending approval 48 hours later. It's a vicious cycle, that starts and ends with the implementation. Commented Mar 20 at 14:29
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    Another plausible factor could be increased volume directly attributed to suggested edits from unregistered users - a metric that certainly exists, though whether it's been published or not I wouldn't know. Commented Mar 20 at 14:44
  • @StelioKontos Surely unregistered users aren't allowed to suggest edits? Commented Mar 20 at 16:06
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    @Lundin Sure they can. Commented Mar 20 at 16:56
  • "And then you wonder why the suggested edit queue is constantly full..." some of them are because of tag wiki. They can only be approved by 5k+. Commented Mar 21 at 5:06
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    @MetaAndrewT. On SO they aren't disabled. Commented Mar 21 at 6:13
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I really agree with you in general, but I'd like to point out a few things.

Why didn't SO have the courtesy to notify me of the locked status before I wasted my time editing the question?

I find this annoying too, but this is because there wasn't an edit when you began your edit. It will tell you there is a pending edit otherwise. But this does seem like the type of thing that could be fixed...

Don't tell me what to do, not when I'm doing it for free.

You aren't told what to do. You are free to not review if you don't want to (although, as you can see with the suggested edits, that just makes the queue get very backlogged).

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    You aren't told what to do. The point I was attempting to make is that not only is SO making it frustrating and tedious for users to collectively help make the site better (on their own free will), but it's being presented as if it's a chore or an assignment. What's wrong with the system showing a little gratitude to the user contributing their time to help improve the site for others? The only place it says thanks at all, is when you complete the max number of tasks for the day. Commented Mar 20 at 14:01
  • @StelioKontos That is fair. You also do get some fun badges for the record (and being a frequent reviewer is by far the easiest to way to get a ton of gold badges on SO) but it would be nice. Commented Mar 20 at 14:05
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    When you add the fact that the UX has multiple points of failure, resulting in frustration for the reviewer - all of which are indeed very fixable, as you noted - the overall message it communicates is that SO as an entity, and the corporate wigs behind it, don't respect the contributor's time and energy. This whole premise is really an overarching issue that's ongoing for years now. Commented Mar 20 at 14:10
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    @StelioKontos Well, guess what, "SO as an entity" doesn't really respect contributors. So its not surprising that's reflected... Commented Mar 20 at 14:15
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    And therein lies the crux of the matter. You summarized the thesis of my question perfectly. Commented Mar 20 at 14:33

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