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When a new user asks a question, I usually open it to check it and give them a welcome. Sometimes those questions are badly worded, have missing punctuation or some misspelled words, or in other cases they are just off-topic.

The latter case is the easiest to recognize and those questions are quickly closed, but the former not so much, apparently. I often find new questions which were accepted as "Looks OK" that the reviewer haven't even read, when both title and description are clearly a mess. Or badly tagged.

Am I the only one who cares about grammar and punctuation to define a question as good?

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    I don't review low-quality questions, but I definitely do agree that grammar and punctuation are important.
    – pppery
    Commented Feb 20, 2022 at 16:23
  • @pppery Review queue workflows have changed, there is now an option labelled "Looks OK" for First Questions and First Answers.
    – One 2 Many
    Commented Feb 20, 2022 at 19:21
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    I meant "low-quality questions" generically; not just one specific review queue.
    – pppery
    Commented Feb 20, 2022 at 19:45
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    Yes, users have different definitions of "Looks OK." See the related meta post: Feedback regarding review suspension - where a user reviewed an answer as "Looks OK" but got suspended from reviewing because a moderator thought they shouldn't have reviewed that way.
    – galacticninja
    Commented Mar 2, 2022 at 0:50
  • @galacticninja in that case the user reviewed a couple of answers already flagged as low-quality posts, and one could agree or not with the mod. What I meant is that badly worded (and often wrongly tagged) questions are getting accepted as "Looks OK", and I feel there's no opinion about that. But thanks for the link.
    – pinckerman
    Commented Mar 2, 2022 at 1:06

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I really only use "Looks OK" when a question or answer, truly, could not be improved by me, or the improvement would be less than the minimum character requirement for a suggested edit (not quite at 2k rep yet!) I very much urge other reviewers to do the same. Really, just do your best to make the post better than you found it. Simply smacking "Looks OK" doesn't help anyone.

Though I'll also mention that in cases of a question being off-topic (enough that it cannot be salvaged), or an answer being a blatant non-answer, I don't attempt to improve it in any way, and instead I just flag for closure/deletion. I feel that, by suggesting an improving edit in that scenario, I'm just putting an extra burden on reviewers as they'll not only need to help review the post itself for closure/deletion, but now also my suggested edit on a post that needs more post author attention than reviewer attention. If I was over 2k reputation, this would be a bit of a different scenario since all I'd be doing is consuming my own time.

A bit of an outlier would be this review of mine, where this revision was visible. I... Honestly could not understand what was trying to be conveyed there, so I just flagged for closure as needing details/clarity, and threw a Share Feedback comment at it. Someone else certainly needed to edit that (and you and Timmy Jim certainly did), but I did still have actions I could take in review (flag for closure + add a comment). A similar review of mine can be found here (requires 10k to see the deleted content) where I left a comment and flagged for closure as I felt that the improvements I could have made would've been minor enough that I felt the onus should be on the post author to improve the question before I attempt to make any improvements.

Often I'll review a question that you have already improved (considerably, in fact!) Here's an example. You sure do like to make things easy for me!

Something you may already be aware of, but others might not be, is that the access to moderator tools privilege comes with the ability to review the full review history of each queue. By navigating to a particular review queue's "History" page (here's First questions' history), you can see the full history of reviews on the site by all users, and as a grizzled veteran of the site, you can ensure that what happened during them was correct. If they weren't, you can correct them by navigating to the post and adjusting them.

If you notice a worrying trend of a particular reviewer taking incorrect actions during review, flag a post (really any works, I like to choose one of my own) for moderator attention and link to all related reviews, and ask that moderators issue a review suspension. If you are running out of space in the flag dialog's explanation box, see this wonderful answer by Ryan M on how to shorten your links so that you can fit more text into the dialog. (View the latest revision's source to see the markdown used.)

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    Thanks for your answer and the examples provided, you don't need to justify yourself, you weren't the addressee of my rant. I often check the First question's review history, that's the reason this post was born. I often thought about "flag a post for moderator attention [..] and ask that moderators issue a review suspension", I may consider that if it's not considered harsh. And thanks for the links suggestion, very helpful!
    – pinckerman
    Commented Jul 6, 2022 at 15:04
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    I would really only flag for a review suspension if there's a trend of incorrect reviews or obviously-missed actions during review. Also, I don't really think a review suspension is too harsh. Really, the suspension is about communication that a particular behavior during review isn't helpful. Starting out, review suspensions are pretty short, lasting only a couple of days (unless the moderator chooses to extend them) -
    – Spevacus
    Commented Jul 6, 2022 at 15:09
  • Short enough that the user in question might not even visit the site during the suspension period (they will still see that they were suspended and will need to view the reason before continuing, though!) And besides, we don't make the decision about whether a review suspension is necessary. By flagging the problematic behavior to the mods, you've already done a service to the site, and it's up to the mods to decide how to communicate that behavior to the user.
    – Spevacus
    Commented Jul 6, 2022 at 15:09
  • Seems legit. I need to keep track of those incorrect reviews then.
    – pinckerman
    Commented Jul 6, 2022 at 15:19
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Grammar and punctuation are definitely important. If a post is really difficult to comprehend due to poor grammar, formatting, etc. to the point where it can't really be salvaged, those should certainly be closed or appropriately flagged and handled. However, if a post only has some minor issues with it, ideally we should edit those posts, instead of passing it off as "Look Ok". I believe all review queues have the option to edit a post to satisfy the review.

Obviously though, we can't enforce this really. Every reviewer thinks differently, or maybe they just didn't see that misspelled word or missing comma. I'm not going to hold it against someone who saw a post as OK even if it has some minor issues.

In short, yes proper grammar and punctuation go a long way for a posts health and you should certainly care about it.

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Heartfelt appeal.

The review queue is something that should be taken seriously, I still see users clicking "Looks OK" on everything, without even reading and fixing a bad written title. And this bothers me so much.

If you don't want to take few seconds to fix a post, why are you wasting your time on the review queue? You are not doing a favour to anyone. And you are not going to receive a prize for that. So please, stop.

I'm looking forward to the day these people will get bored and leave the reviews to someone who really matters.

</end_rant>

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