Harm is already covered as a rejection reason:
We have two rejection reasons already for edits that cause harm:
spam or vandalism
This edit defaces the post in order to promote a product or service, or is deliberately destructive.no improvement whatsoever
This edit does not make the post even a little bit easier to read, easier to find, more accurate or more accessible. Changes are either completely superfluous or actively harm readability.
and to an implied extent, this reason:
clearly conflicts with author's intent
This edit deviates from the original intent of the post. Even edits that must make drastic changes should strive to preserve the goals of the post's owner.
There's a lack of clarity over when to use the "causes harm" rejection reason:
There's been some discussion over what the "causes harm" reason is to be used for, and the consequences of its use. It's also not immediately clear what the difference is between the "causes harm" and "vandalism" reasons.
- What is the difference between Vandalism and Causes Harm while reviewing an edit?
- Where is the line drawn between "no improvement whatsoever" and "causes harm"?
I'm an avid user and only learned that the "causes harm" reason can be used to write custom messages after posting a question and reading this comment:
No, that's really just a custom reason box. It doesn't say "causesharm" anywhere on the rejection. The idea is that you are onlysupposed to reject edits if they cause harm, though, not just on awhim. Obviously if you abuse it, someone will ask you to stop.
– Cody Gray♦
I had never tested this, as I didn't realise there was no consequence from writing the custom reason. The description implies that it causes harm.
In my opinion, the UX/UI should be intuitive and meet the user's expectation.
Requests for custom reasons:
There have also been requests to be able reject an edit for a custom reason, which would satisfy the desire for other rejection reasons brought up on Meta.
Custom rejection reasons to educate:
I've started using the "causes harm" reason to leave custom rejection reasons. The advantage of this is that I can explain to the user exactly why I'm rejecting their edit, and also tell them if I believe there is a better course of action. (Example 1 and 2).
Concerns about abuse or misuse of this new feature
There's some concerns in the comments that trivial edits will be rejected and the custom reason being used to explain why.
My big fear with renaming this to "custom reason" is that it'd be usedto reject edits for being "too minor". The "causes harm" label makesclear that that's not a thing you're supposed to do - that as long asthe edit is making the post strictly better, it should be approved.Allow any old "custom reason" and people will use it to reject editsfor, say, fixing the unreadable code indentation but leaving theungrammatical code untouched, or vice versa. Perhaps renaming to"makes post worse" instead of "custom reason" would do as a compromisebetween our positions.
and this comment
.../ Hence, clarifying and preventing usage for minor stuff.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact the reverse is true; the fear of bad edits being approved.
Making trivial suggested edits is not acceptable. They bump the question to the home page. They may indeed not make the post worse, but are not within the keeping of the spirit of making edits to improve posts. Making a trivial edit and leaving obvious formatting issues, is not ok.
From the help center:
Tiny, trivial edits are discouraged - try to make the postsignificantly better when you edit, correcting all problems that youobserve.
Changing the box name will only assist in helping frustrated reviewers communicating with a user making a series of trivial edits to game rep.
Up until now, I've had to find the user's latest answer and post under it to make a mention of where I think they're going wrong. Of course this can be done in the causes harm box, but if it was named custom, I wouldn't have been tracking down users for the past few years, if I'd known how to use this custom box.
If there's any concern about anything abusive being written in the reason box, these can be flagged. Most users who have the rep to review suggested edits, understand how the site works and would understand that everything is transparent and users are held accountable for their actions.
Besides, it takes more effort to write a custom reason, than to click on one of the canned reasons.
Therefore, can we rename the "causes harm" reason?
I think we should rename this to "custom reason":
(This was previously requested by S.L. Barth on Meta Stack Exchange.)
