Is the date of the question relevant when reviewing suggested edits?

Question

Recently I see some users going through very old questions and answers with minor formatting edits. I say "minor" not because they change too little, but because the posts were readable before, just not perfectly formatted. The edits show some effort and make the posts look nicer but are not really necessary.

I flagged them as "No improvement whatsoever", but am not sure if this is the right thing to do.

My considerations:

• the post was understandable as it is and the formatting was not broken
• bumping many old posts just for perfect formatting might be annoying

On the other hand I tend to accept such edits if the post is just a few hours old and I don't think, editing old posts in general is bad if it's an improvement.

Should I pay attention to the post date at all when it comes to edits?

Answer 1

i think formating is necessary for question and answer. if the question or answer is formated then it is easy to read and understand so i always approve this kind editing.

Answer 2

I'm like Qaisar on this one, I always approve edit that adds the code formatting to the post, it's a real improvement for me as you can clearly see what's related to code/commands/pathname/filename.

I reckon we should approve it.

When I reach a post where it's just a plain wall of text with no code formatting I don't feel like answering it.

Let's say I open a very old question for any reason, there's more chance I will answer it if there's code formatting than if there's none and it's hard to read.

To be honest if the question is related to something I'm working on or something I'm interested in, I will probably do the edit myself ^^

Answer 3

I believe edit suggestion should have the top priority irrespective of the relevance of that question. An edit suggestion in such cases will have two main motos.

1. One need more points. So he/she goes to old questions list and suggest some edits.

2. One comes to an old question by searching something on internet. He/she thinks questions presentation can be improved. So he/she is coming up with a new suggestion.

Whatever be the case, what we need to think is whether the suggested edit really makes question/answer more charm or not. If yes, we should approve it otherwise we should not.. We need to encourage such edits in any case.

Content is the king and it should be charm.