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Why when someone retags a question (and also when he or she suggests an edit, I think) that question becomes the first in the list of 'active' questions???

This is very inconvenient — I hate it — because it puts back questions that are really active (with new answers, for example). Retagging doesn't sufficiently change a question to put it in the first position. The list of active questions should be reserved for questions containing real changes rather than minor, irrelevant changes such as one more or one less tag.

This wasn't a problem for me until certain user started to retag questions permanently. For example, in the last two hours he has made 16 suggestions or editions (and often the number is even larger). I'm not against his editions or suggestions, I am against the questions he edits appear in the first position in the list of active question.

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    $\begingroup$ Which is why one should limit their mass retags to around 4 at a time, even less. $\endgroup$ Aug 14, 2013 at 18:21
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    $\begingroup$ @Manishearth What does "at a time" exactly mean? $\endgroup$ Aug 14, 2013 at 18:23
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    $\begingroup$ possible duplicate of Minor edits should not make questions 'active' $\endgroup$
    – Dilaton
    Aug 14, 2013 at 18:23
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    $\begingroup$ Possible duplicates: meta.physics.stackexchange.com/q/47/2451 and links therein. $\endgroup$
    – Qmechanic Mod
    Aug 14, 2013 at 18:30
  • $\begingroup$ Sorry. I didn't know this question had been asked before. Can some moderator answer what "at a time" in Manishearth's comment above exactly means? @Qmechanic $\endgroup$ Aug 14, 2013 at 18:36
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    $\begingroup$ The rule of thumb advice for potential editors is to limit mass edits of old posts, i.e, so that only a handful of their old post edits appear on the front page at the same time. [An old post is by definition here a post not already appearing on the front page. There are no limit to edits of new (=front page) posts.] $\endgroup$
    – Qmechanic Mod
    Aug 14, 2013 at 18:43
  • $\begingroup$ @Qmechanic Of course, should have mentioned that. $\endgroup$ Aug 14, 2013 at 18:51
  • $\begingroup$ Thank you. My issue or problem is with old posts. Retagging a new post is perfect for me. But a handful of edits of old post seem to me too many. I would limit them to one or two at the most. It is of course my personal opinion. @Qmechanic $\endgroup$ Aug 14, 2013 at 18:53
  • $\begingroup$ And the user in question will soon pass 2,000 rep, so that his edits no longer have to go through review. That's one of the reasons why I asked the same question as you a few days ago. $\endgroup$
    – Pulsar
    Aug 15, 2013 at 8:04

1 Answer 1

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So, what can be done about overpopulation of minor edits on the front page?

  1. Not bringing minor edits to the front page has already been declined many times, see Very minor edits, e.g. punctuation and links therein.

  2. User Pulsar has very recently proposed in a comment to have an extra tab of active posts sans minor edits. This is an interesting idea if such a list is feasible to implement in the future.

  3. The rule of thumb advice for potential editors is to limit mass edits of old posts, i.e, so that only a handful of their old post edits appear on the front page at the same time. [An old post is by definition here a post not appearing on the front page. There are no limit to edits of new (=front page) posts.]

  4. [This is not really a solution to the underlying problem, but you might find it useful anyway:] Alternatively, if you are mainly interested in recent questions, you might consider to instead browse the newest question tab rather than the front page. This way of browsing avoids all the edits, but the downside is that you will miss all the new answers to older questions.

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  • $\begingroup$ I like number 1 and 2. Another alternative would be to restrict the number of minor-edits of old posts (Qmechanics's definiton of 'old posts' is good for me) to only one or, at most, two, each day. $\endgroup$ Aug 14, 2013 at 19:53
  • $\begingroup$ @drake one or at most two each day is a bit overly restrictive in my opinion. When retagging TP and astronomy posts we follwed the advice of not doing more than 5 at the same time at most twice each day. With your restriction, at most about 720 posts could be immproved per year. One should also consider that there are only a handfull people (at most 5) who edit rather regularly (I know this from reviewing the edit queue). This is not too much for our site I think. $\endgroup$
    – Dilaton
    Aug 14, 2013 at 20:07
  • $\begingroup$ @Dilaton 10 edits per day seem to me too many. Anyway, there is a user — I think it is not necessary to mention his nick but I'll do it if you ask me to do it — who highly exceeds these numbers. For example, in the last 24 hours (summing reviews, revisions, and suggestions) he has made around 25 minor edits. What do you think about this? $\endgroup$ Aug 14, 2013 at 20:25
  • $\begingroup$ @drake I know what you mean ;-). I personally do not mind the edits, in particular setting LaTex issues straight can largely improve the readability of a question, and in my opinion it is quite important that the questions have the right tags such that people interested in the topic can find them. Just yesterday I overlooked a question asking about the energy-momentum tensor because I thought I know this well enough and only clicked the question, after it was properly retagged with conformal-field theory and another one. And it recently happend to me, that one of my questions only got a nice $\endgroup$
    – Dilaton
    Aug 14, 2013 at 20:41
  • $\begingroup$ answer and additional upvotes after somebody added a tag I have omitted. But this is just me and I can well understand that other people feel different. An appropriate new feature to allow for an additional way how to display the list of questions would be the best for everybody, but I generally think what Qmechanic says in his answer is (again) very reasonable. $\endgroup$
    – Dilaton
    Aug 14, 2013 at 20:44

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