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Recently, a number of old, closed questions with the tag have been edited with that tag being replaced with an actual tag.

Here's an example of such an edit. The question is several years old, and was never appropriate in the first place. I've not wanted to approve the edit, since it would push this old and closed question to the front page and the reopen review queue. On the other hand, I can't really say that the edit is inappropriate, since the new tag is better than the non-tag.

How should these reviews be handled?

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    As these have been pushed to the front page I have been voting and casting close / delete votes on them as appropriate. I even rolled back one but the OP found it again and re-edited it. I also ran out of close and delete votes on a couple of days.
    – user9517
    Jan 20, 2016 at 11:52
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    Precisely, @Iain. Each edit makes the specific question better, but it makes the site worse.
    – Jenny D
    Jan 20, 2016 at 11:54
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    More people need to use their delete votes more often - you know it makes sense.
    – user9517
    Jan 20, 2016 at 11:55
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    Pretty much every edit undertaken here is a good indication of a question that needs special attention.
    – user9517
    Jan 20, 2016 at 11:59
  • Right, @Iain. It's easy to forget the delete queue since it doesn't show up in the regular review list.
    – Jenny D
    Jan 20, 2016 at 12:07
  • The delete queue is here for 10K+ people.
    – user9517
    Jan 20, 2016 at 12:50
  • From the untagged tag excerpt: " ...is reserved for use by the system to identify posts with no valid tags.". Am I now being blamed around here of suggesting valid tags, which (except from a few) all got approved? FYI: (1) If there would be a flag like "don't push this question to the frontpage after editing it", I'd have flagged it as such with each of those edits. (2) be my guest to delete all those retagged questions now "also" (I really don't mind about each of the -2 rep changes for any such deletes). Jan 20, 2016 at 17:29
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    @Pierre.Vriens I am sorry you feel that you are being blamed. I quite agree that it's a good thing to fix untagged posts. What I'm wondering about is the impact on the site of pushing questions, that have already been closed as off-topic, to the front site and the review queue. (Questions closed as duplicate are another matter; they have a use.)
    – Jenny D
    Jan 21, 2016 at 9:20
  • @JennyD thanks for the feedback, happy to read you did not dislike the untagging itself ... Feel free to take my "... If there would be a flag like "don't push this question to the frontpage after editing it", I'd have flagged it as such with each of those edits ..." to meta!SE. I honestly think THAT is the best possible compromise for everybody (I won't post it there since I have bad experiences with using that site ...). Jan 21, 2016 at 9:29
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    @Pierre It takes a long time for feature requests to bubble through the pipe. In the meantime, we would be genuinely appreciative of any discretion you can exercise when selecting which posts to edit and how frequently. You're not doing anything "against the rules" but as a community we've reached a consensus on our meta site that pushing active posts off the front page with a wall of edits is not in SF's best interests. That goes double when it's stale/off-topic content.
    – Andrew B
    Jan 21, 2016 at 10:26
  • @AndrewB : FYI I'm NOT planning any more "untagged"-tagged questions (refer to my answer to the "linked" question for details on that). However I'm not sure if I should translate your comment to NOT suggesting any edits at all anymore (eg the ones I suggested earlier today). Until I hear anything different on that (or notice so, like getting banned from suggesting edits ...), I'm assuming that there is nothing wrong in suggesting such edits. And yes I'm aware that it's sufficient to get a reject / approve rate of about 5 (?) more rejected edit suggestions as compared to approved ones. Jan 21, 2016 at 10:39
  • @Iain I believe there are some that should be deleted. But there are also some of them which have good answers, in which case I don't think they should be deleted.
    – kasperd
    Jan 21, 2016 at 10:57
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    @Pierre The main thing to be cautious of is "walls of edits" of off-topic or very old content. Working through the review queue is never a problem for example. (in this context, at least) We're not providing a whole lot of value on our front page if it's mostly old/irrelevant stuff though. We'll ping you here if it's a problem.
    – Andrew B
    Jan 21, 2016 at 11:00
  • OK @AndrewB ... that's clear ... I'll do my best to remember it. Jan 21, 2016 at 11:10
  • FWIW, these edits do not put a closed question into the Reopen review queue. That's only for edits within 5 days after closure (and IIRC tag-only edits never count).
    – Glorfindel
    Apr 17, 2018 at 17:16

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