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Over the past few days I've been going through some of my old Hobbit movie answers updating them where appropriate for new info contained in the third movie. This mostly relates to "why did..." speculative-type questions about movie-canon info that hadn't yet been available at the time the question was asked. In all cases I've let the original answer stand but have just added supplementary paragraphs.

Anyway, while there's value in having these bumped (so that the update is more easily visible) on a couple of occasions I've made a trivial edit: for example in my answer to Does Thorin have the last Dwarf ring? I've recently made an edit to correct a typo - an "s" to an "r" - and such an edit hardly merits bumping.

There doesn't appear to be an "opt-out" option for bumping. Now, I can understand at least one reason why: we definitely don't want a batch of destructive editing going on without anyone becoming aware of it. But in the case of high-rep users (or users sufficiently trusted by virtue of having, say, a relevant Silver tag badge (which I should note I don't have, but am close to) or something) such an opt-out would definitely be useful.

It would at the very least enable us to do useful community work such as spelling corrections, grammar corrections, retagging, and other housekeeping/fix-up without swamping the front page with bumped questions that are of minimal or no interest to anyone else.

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  • possible duplicate of My edits bump the question, can this be avoided?
    – Möoz
    Commented Dec 17, 2014 at 22:35
  • @Mooz - note my closing proposal for a suggested solution to it, which isn't in the other question. That's the part I'd like to focus on. I've edited this question title to clarify that.
    – user8719
    Commented Dec 17, 2014 at 22:37

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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This has been requested and declined for upwards of 5 years now, even as a moderator-only power. The only exception was a special team of SE employees a couple years ago, going through and cleaning up all the sites.

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    Since it's been declined as a mod-only power then the idea of having it as a tag-badge power doesn't stand a snowball's either. Thanks.
    – user8719
    Commented Dec 18, 2014 at 21:53
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I'm pretty certain this subject has come up before but I'm on my phone and can't search.

The posts are bumped so that the community can peer review your edits without them being stuck in a queue like new users. While your edits are small and innocuous there is no guarantee that the edits by the next person will be.

By bumping we can see that edits have been made and make sure that no one is going and vandalizing old posts.

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    I can understand that reason (and I've noted the responses in @Kevin's link) but the Tag Badge criteria seems to weigh against the concerns. Someone with a Silver or Gold Tag Badge in a tag that's on the question is hardly likely to go on a destructive rampage. Unless there's something else that I'm missing.
    – user8719
    Commented Dec 17, 2014 at 22:29
  • @phantom42 Yes, discussed here and here
    – Möoz
    Commented Dec 17, 2014 at 22:33
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    @DarthSatan Re: "destructive rampage". A high-rep user or one with a Tag Badge could still go rogue and do some sabotaging to other people's posts. What if they had an altercation with another user or became disenfranchised with something... They could 'fight back' quietly or sneakily by altering questions without the community noticing.
    – Canadian Girl Scout
    Commented Dec 19, 2014 at 8:12

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