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I happened to look back at an old post of mine, and found that it was recently edited by a user with 1 reputation point. The edits were trivial — e.g., in https://math.stackexchange.com/posts/1057573/revisions, you can see that a link was replaced by the same link with a small URL difference.

  1. Why would someone do this in the first place?

  2. Should I just revert these unnecessary edits?

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    $\begingroup$ I spell stuffs wrong all the time n then they edits my posts. Makes me chuckle. Not sure to laugh at how dumb I must look to people or how dumb it is that people care so much. Either way, we are all idiots, and that's worth a laugh or two! $\endgroup$ May 4, 2017 at 17:06
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    $\begingroup$ Some editor has tried to edit a post of mine from 2013, two consecutive days $\endgroup$
    – amWhy
    May 4, 2017 at 17:30
  • $\begingroup$ @amWhy: Is it the Community User? And are they editing URLs? If so, see the accepted answer (below). $\endgroup$ May 4, 2017 at 18:34
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    $\begingroup$ Kieran No, the first edit was approved by two users yesterday, but I had the option to reject the edit, and did so. Today I saw, after the same editor of the same question attempted to make substantial edits, the edit attempt was rejected. It was a to an answer from 2013! (I had helped the asker to find one, say x= 2, of three roots (cubic polynomial), so that $x-2$ would be one factor, and explained polynomial division, for the asker to obtain a quadratic, to find the other two roots. The attempted edit deleted half my post, and simply provided the entire answer (all three roots.) $\endgroup$
    – amWhy
    May 4, 2017 at 18:41
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    $\begingroup$ @amWhy when I get edits like that proposed I just let em through. If the reviewers approve it then it must be a decent edit/improvement, right? :p $\endgroup$
    – user64742
    May 5, 2017 at 2:44
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    $\begingroup$ @TheGreatDuck The reviewers also rejected the edits. $\endgroup$
    – amWhy
    May 5, 2017 at 12:05
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    $\begingroup$ Why would you reverse them?! $\endgroup$ May 15, 2017 at 15:23
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    $\begingroup$ If it had been a registered user rather than an anonymous edit I'd have asked the person why it was done. Sometimes there is a reason that you don't know about. $\endgroup$ May 15, 2017 at 17:35
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    $\begingroup$ @NajibIdrissi: If an edit modifies my original intention, I always [attempt to] reverse it. $\endgroup$ May 16, 2017 at 19:18
  • $\begingroup$ Changing http to https modifies your original intention? $\endgroup$ May 17, 2017 at 7:09
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    $\begingroup$ @NajibIdrissi: No… all I said was if an edit modifies my intention, I always [attempt to] reverse it. Your comment (especially the interrobang) strongly implied that one should never try to reverse a trivial edit under any circumstances — or at least I inferred that, and hence my clarification. $\endgroup$ May 17, 2017 at 11:46

2 Answers 2

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This was an automatic edit by the Community user as part of the recent network-wide change to https. In reality, an SE developer was responsible behind the scenes for this edit (and many many others in the same time period).

The proper course of action is to simply ignore this edit, and all others like it: they were made for a reason.

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  • $\begingroup$ So why is it not hidden automatically, if it is just noise? $\endgroup$ May 15, 2017 at 12:14
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    $\begingroup$ @FedericoPoloni It is not noise. It is keeping a public record of the evolution of the post. If anything one could say that the edit description isn't clear enough (for example it could contain a link to the Meta Stack Exchange post about the switch to https). But since these edits were entirely silent (as in, they did not bump the posts) this isn't really a big deal, imho. $\endgroup$
    – user642796
    May 15, 2017 at 12:26
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Here's my answer if the edit were really by a newbie with low rep: let it stand if it's correct.

When I see newbie answers to old already answered questions I'll sometimes comment with a welcome message, then mildly suggests that this particular contribution didn't add much, but that I hoped to see more posts that did. I don't downvote.

I remember that when I was new I wanted to exercise my chance to make everything better here. The fact that I could make (minor) edits made me feel welcome in the community. After a while I realized those small fixes were unnecessary, and even distracting if they bumped old posts to the front page.

I still fix many typos in question titles - perhaps more than I should.

Edit: Here's a recent example. not from a new user (shortly after I posted my answer): https://math.stackexchange.com/posts/17765/revisions

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    $\begingroup$ I totally get that — and I've let lots of those types of edits slide. This time, [not knowing who The Community User was], I was worried that someone was trying to “game the system”, getting reputation for doing things which were neither of mathematical importance nor made the post any clearer/better. $\endgroup$ May 3, 2017 at 13:38
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    $\begingroup$ The Voice of Reason. Thanks for nudging users up the ladder. Thanks for fighting math anxiety. Thanks for fixing titles. It helps searchers and cuts down on duplications. $\endgroup$
    – dantopa
    May 10, 2017 at 3:24

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