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I tried to fix an answer which contained a Windows command, and the command contained a typo made that broke the command. After fixing the typo, I get Edits must be at least 6 characters; is there something else to improve in this post?

This is either a bug or incredibly misguided. Do I seriously have to rewrite parts of an answer which are perfectly fine (something that I would consider to be rude to the author), just to be able to fix a single character which will cause problems to anyone who tries to execute that code?

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  • Short answer: yes, it can be annoying and sometimes you need to work around it.
    – Sterno
    Sep 8, 2013 at 16:10
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    Here's part of the rationale, straight from the Atwood's mouth. The system can't know how important that one character is in this case. If you have a significant edit with a low character count and the post is otherwise 100% fine, then you're kind of SOL, unfortunately.
    – a cat
    Sep 8, 2013 at 16:27
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    You can still leave a comment pointing out the error to the author. If it remains unfixed by the author, someone else with greater editing privileges is likely to see it at some point, and in the meantime, readers will know that the command can be used with the fix in the comment.
    – SevenSidedDie
    Sep 8, 2013 at 19:37

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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This is because your edit needs to go through peer approval before it can be applied. The minimum length feature provides a "must be this tall to ride" level of minimum significance so that our 2kers (people who can review suggested edits) don't get swamped by dozens of tiny edits.

People with 2k reputation, btw, get to edit any amount of characters of any post without peer approval and get to leave the edit reason message empty.

If you really really need to push your edit through, try this:

  • Find and fix typoes
  • Add a link or an image
  • Fix the formatting
  • ...add an HTML comment

Remember, however, that peer review means people still get to decline your suggested edits manually for being not significant enough even if you pass the six characters bar :)

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