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I was working the Low Quality Post review queue, specifically this Question. I wanted to make an Edit to clean up an evident omission (that "spaces" are topological spaces), but I did not think this suffices to make the meaning clear.

So instead of doing the edit directly from the Review Queue, I drilled down to the underlying Question and did an edit there. My expectation was this would allow me to "skip" the over-lying review and give the OP additional time to clarify what the problem means.

However, the Review Queue instead told me "this item is no longer reviewable", so my strategy failed.

How can I make a useful Edit without either removing the item from the Review Queue or indicating that the post's quality is "good enough" for Math.SE?

Perhaps the lesson is not to try to make a slight improvement to LQ posts in review, until the OP has responded to Comments requesting clarification. However time spent reviewing and improving posts is at something of a premium, so I'd prefer to do what I can while the post is in front of me.

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    $\begingroup$ I believe, but the details regarding this aspect of the site are a bit opaque so I might well not be correct, you could just have flagged LQ after your edit to put it back into the queue. $\endgroup$
    – quid Mod
    Aug 1, 2016 at 22:22
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    $\begingroup$ @quid: I did what you outlined, without any evident raising of an error. $\endgroup$
    – hardmath
    Aug 1, 2016 at 23:44
  • $\begingroup$ not sure it matters, I made the last vote to close, mostly because the OP posted something poor and ran away. $\endgroup$
    – Will Jagy
    Aug 2, 2016 at 0:49

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What the review queue is trying to tell you is that you shouldn't spend the time to edit a post if you have doubts about whether it's a good fit for the site at all.

Posts go into the low quality queue to be triaged into "is acceptable for this site," "needs to be closed," and "needs to be deleted." The system is set up to actively discourage you from wasting time on edits where they're not needed, because the number of posts that could be edited far exceeds the number of editors. It's a way to better focus your efforts.

As a result, the system prevents you from both editing and considering a post low quality, under the philosophy that you should only edit a post if it falls under "is acceptable for this site."

I'd agree, though, it does this in a somewhat opaque way.

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  • $\begingroup$ Math.SE gets quite a bit of its questions from new members with a genuine desire to learn some math, a goal that StackExchange as a whole supports. The "triage" you describe applies, I suspect, better to Puzzling.SE than it does to Math.SE, since the editorial standards for composing a good puzzle are higher than for asking a math question on an unfamiliar topic. This affects the time scale on which questions should be closed/deleted since many new users need assistance in getting the context well explained for their problems. $\endgroup$
    – hardmath
    Aug 15, 2016 at 18:07
  • $\begingroup$ I tried to make my answer as site-agnostic as possible. Whether or not this is how the feature should exist with regard to a particular site, this is why it it exists. I actually do understand your reasons for wondering if it should be different on Math.SE, though. (I do participate in more than one site, as well.) $\endgroup$
    – user66698
    Aug 15, 2016 at 18:15

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