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As you all know, once a user reach 2000 reputation he is able to edit questions and answers. Users with less than 2000 reputation can also edit a post however their edit needs to be reviewed and accepted.

Every now and then I see such edits and in most cases I accept these edits. What's odd is that we need more than one user to review and accept an edit. Not too long ago I got this message after accepting an edit:

"You have already reviewed this item. It needs more reviews from other users to be completed."

I find this odd because as a user with more than 2000 reputation I could edit the question myself without the need of peer-review, so I don't see why I can't accept an edit only by myself. What's more annoying is that once I approve an edit I can't edit the question even further (I have to wait for the previous edit to be accepted/rejected first).

Is there any reason for this?

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  • $\begingroup$ I think the point is that any user with 2000 reputation would also be able to reject somebody else's edit—even though at 1999 they couldn't even make an edit without needing approval. see my answer below! $\endgroup$
    – timtfj
    Jan 27, 2019 at 15:29
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    $\begingroup$ From what I read in the list of feature changes, the change from one to two reviewers was made in October 2012 (2012-10-16). See also: It takes two to tango? You can find there also link to an older discussion which preceded this decision. $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Jan 27, 2019 at 19:38
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    $\begingroup$ Because some reviewers, yes, even those with greater than 2000 K in rep, review on autopilot, or are careless otherwise, occasionally. Always good to have an extra check/extra reviewer, so when the two disagree, a third can weigh in. $\endgroup$
    – jordan_glen
    Jan 28, 2019 at 15:59
  • $\begingroup$ @timtfj I see, thanks for your answer too. Your situation explains why we need two to reject an edit. Still I don't see why we need two to accept it, and why can't we edit it further before the edit is accepted. $\endgroup$
    – Yanko
    Jan 29, 2019 at 18:53
  • $\begingroup$ @jordan_glen I see. I wonder why one accepts an edit if he doesn't read it. Anyway I still don't understand why we can't edit it before it is accepted. $\endgroup$
    – Yanko
    Jan 29, 2019 at 18:55
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    $\begingroup$ @Yanko I was thinking the same. An accepted edit gets seen afterwards anyway, so people can undo it if they don't like it, but a rejected edit is invisible and (presumably) nobody can un-reject it. So accepting and rejecting aren't quite equivalent privileges, I'd have thought. (I've not quite acquired them yet, so I'm not familiar with the reviewr's side of the setup.) $\endgroup$
    – timtfj
    Jan 29, 2019 at 20:06

1 Answer 1

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An experience I recently had might answer this.

I was so misled by a question title that I went ahead and spent half an hour writing an answer to the wrong thing, which I then had to discard.

So I edited the question title, to save anyone else being similarly misled.

The first reviewer accepted the edit. The second reviewer rejected it. The third reviewer again accepted it, and the edit went through.

I was surprised by the second reviewer's rejection (the edit seemed completely essential), so clicked to see their stats—which said they'd rejected over twice as many edits ($>1700$) as they'd accepted ($<700)$.

I think the final result was correct: a misleading title was edited to match the question, and two people approved it. But with one reviewer, it might have been rejected.

So I think it's appropriate, especially considering there can be a subjective element in assessing the quality of an edit.

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