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Sometimes the software asks me to approve or reject edits that other users have made. If the edit is obviously spam I'm happy to reject it, or if it's obviously good I'm happy to approve it, but sometimes it takes a non-trivial amount of work to determine if the edit is justified, and I don't feel like doing that.

So I hit "skip" the majority of the time. Is this sort of behavior OK? If I don't want to approve/reject edits at all, may I simply ignore the request, or is this considered bad for the site in the long term.

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    $\begingroup$ Anyone who says "hey you, you're not doing enough of your unobligatory volunteer community service and not forcing yourself to do the hard ones, get back to work!" is doing something wrong. All the review work you do in good faith, and your discretion in doing no harm are appreciated and could not be considered rude. $\endgroup$
    – rschwieb
    Commented Jan 30, 2014 at 14:27
  • $\begingroup$ thanks (to be clear, my skipping is probably 80% laziness and 20% genuine inability to make a good decision) $\endgroup$
    – hunter
    Commented Jan 30, 2014 at 17:27
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    $\begingroup$ If you are in a situation where you feel like a review is too tough to call, then the answer may very well be 无. $\endgroup$
    – rschwieb
    Commented Jan 30, 2014 at 17:46
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    $\begingroup$ Until the day the software system achieve self-awareness, there is no danger to be "rude" to it. IMHO, it will be better to skip an edit you are not sure instead of approving an edit that should be rejected. In general, there are more work for others to undo damages for a wrong edit. $\endgroup$
    – achille hui
    Commented Jan 31, 2014 at 5:43
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    $\begingroup$ What you do by rejecting the spam saves other the time from rejecting and the fast approves for good edits do the same. A few members who do this often will spare those who enjoy the tedious edits from having to disposition those. So your efforts are adding value to the group. Certainly not rude. $\endgroup$
    – JTP - Apologise to Monica
    Commented Feb 1, 2014 at 13:08
  • $\begingroup$ The edit review queue is almost always empty for me, so there is really no reason to feel obligated to do anything about it. $\endgroup$
    – Phira
    Commented Feb 1, 2014 at 22:11

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So I hit "skip" the majority of the time. Is this sort of behavior OK?

More than that. If you are not sure whether an edit is good and should be approved or not, "Skip" is exactly the button you should push (similarly for the other review tasks).

Usually, there are other people who will know whether it should be approved or rejected (though not all of them may agree on which).

Sure, if everybody would "skip" every not-completely-obvious decision, we would have a problem. But we would also have a problem if everybody randomly approved or rejected suggested edits.

If I don't want to approve/reject edits at all, may I simply ignore the request, or is this considered bad for the site in the long term.

You may ignore the request, if you don't feel like evaluating edit suggestions. There are many ways to contribute to the site, not everybody needs to contribute in all possible ways.

It would be bad if we didn't have enough people reviewing suggested edits, late answers etc., but for the time being, there is no immediate danger of that happening.

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    $\begingroup$ (+1) I'd like to add that skipping is very appropriate in particular if you encounter an edit in a tag or branch of mathematics of which you know nothing about. This seems to happen to me fairly often given the huge scope of the site, and I'm not going to approve an edit when I don't understand half of what the post is saying. $\endgroup$
    – Caleb Stanford
    Commented Feb 2, 2014 at 19:54

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