Reviewing edits

Question

I've noticed a some edits in the review queue that I'm not sure on the best action, so I'm asking for guidance.

In general these edits are on answers and they typically add information... but it's not information that's strictly directed at the original question.

Let's take the current example: How to read dmesg from previous session? (dmesg.0)

The edit added "-p priority Filter by priority output (4 to filter out notice and info)."

Now that's true. But the question was around "reading the previous dmesg", not around "useful journalctl options".

But I don't think this edit falls within the reject reasons available:

• spam or vandalism
• no improvement whatsoever
• clearly conflicts with author's intent
• attempt to reply
• causes harm

At the moment I'm skipping these types of reviews (if I don't know the right thing to do, don't do it!). What's the recommended action?

Answer 1

I agree with your reluctance around this.

Given no examples in the answer used that switch, adding it seems superfluous and I would've rejected it with this reason:

clearly conflicts with author's intent

This reason is usually my go to when someone takes a little bit too much liberties in expanding an answer for really no obvious reason. IMO this is one of those scenarios.

Answer 2

I don’t know it this is an abuse of the causes harm option but I sometimes treat it as a general purpose method for providing custom feedback to the editor – so that they learn something from the experience and they’re not getting frustrated by trying to figure out what the real reason their edit was rejected if one of the canned options isn’t particularly applicable.

Two examples:

• https://unix.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/260824
• https://unix.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/263436

In the case of this particular edit suggestion, I would have rejected it with the custom reason of “not directly relevant to this particular question (and could conflict with the author’s intent)”.