When I process the review queue, I keep several points in mind:
Does it improve the question?
Is it timely?
Is this a new user who needs to gain some reputation for increased engagement?
Does it improve site engagement (will my rejection discourage new users from continued participation)?
One thing that I keep in mind is that editing older posts pushes down and eventually off, newer more relevant questions. I believe that nobody wants to see their current question get pushed down the page for older, obsolete questions that are unlikely to see renewed engagement.
I’d like to believe I’m cognizant of the hurdles a new user must go through to gain reputation points an the desire for some of us with OCD to see a nicely organized site with consistent formatting and wording.
I have some rules of thumb that I go by when deciding on rejecting an edit:
Superfluous Edits (Formatting, grammar, spelling, and typos)
Edits to questions that haven’t had activity in (approx) a year or less will generally be approved unless they are significantly incomplete.
If the post is rife with correctable errors and only a few words like MacBook Pro or macOS has been addressed, I will either either Reject or Reject & Edit/Improve Edit depending on the time I’m willing to invest.
Edits greater than 5 years will likely be rejected unless it is a highly active, still current, and the edit does improve the post.
This means simple typos or word usage/formatting will be rejected, but a fix in code or a URL will be approved.
Edit between 1 and 5 years I take on a case by case basis
Generally speaking if an genuine effort was made on a post that was in need of editing because it was a “wall of text”, in all lower case, mis-spellings, etc. I will approve the edit. If it’s small, minor fixes, I will generally reject unless you’re a new user trying to gain footing on the site. In this case, I will approve, but send a chat or leave a comment about editing.
Edits that Harm Posts
It goes without saying that any edit that causes harm (replies to the post author, changing the authors intent, etc.) are going to be rejected. How do I determine this?
Replies. Thank you posts, commentary, or anything that doesn’t directly add to the answer will be rejected
Updating the answer to the current year/version.. (IMO) this should be a new answer rather than an edit to an existing post. There are users still using older products that may have the same question. However, editing what seems to be an obsolete answer means the person searching for this info can no longer find it.
Link Updates. These are generally approved as keeping links from going stale is a concern (it helps with SEO and ultimately site engagement). I do visit the link to ensure functionality and prevent SPAM.
Code Updates. Generally I will approve unless it’s very superfluous (i.e. two dashes instead of one for command line arguments) and not very active. I will reject code when making changes due to new versions (i.e. Bash shell versus Zsh). I would prefer to see a small edit indicating the difference with the new environment or a new answer altogether.
