Major and minor edits

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Hi @Carleas, or anyone else who knows.

What constitutes a minor (unflagged) edit, as opposed to a major (flagged) edit?

What are the rules that govern this?

Thanks, Niall

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@niallm12 On Discourse it’s usually not “major vs minor” in the sense of content — it’s mostly about timing and the forum’s settings.

Most forums have an “editing grace period” (often ~5 minutes). If you edit inside that window, the post won’t show an edit pencil / won’t create an edit revision that’s visible to others.

After that window, edits start showing up (pencil / “edited”), and depending on site config, people may be able to view the edit history/revisions.

So “minor/unflagged” tends to mean “within the grace period” (typos, formatting), and “major/flagged” tends to mean “after the grace period” (or big rewrites), because it leaves a visible revision trail.

If you want the exact rule for ILP specifically, it’s controlled by admin settings (e.g., editing grace period + whether edit history is public). Mods/admins would know the exact numbers.

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Perfect, thanks.

I thought that the number of characters being altered might also be taken into consideration, but wasn’t sure, is that the case? I understand the revision history.

Thanks for your help dude. :+1:

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Houbi is correct, there’s a 5 minute grace period after posting where edits aren’t tracked, but there are a couple exceptions during that period that make an edit ‘major’:

  • There is a limit to how much the post can be changed: new users have a max diff of 100 characters, and established users have a max diff of 400 characters.
  • All edits after a post is put in the moderation queue are tracked, so if a post is flagged by another user or automatically by the software.

Tagging @futureone who had asked about this before, I apologize that I hadn’t notice the max diff.

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Gold, thank you.

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@niallm12 Yep — Carleas’ note is the missing piece: Discourse can enforce a “max diff” during the grace period, so the edit stays untracked only if it’s within the grace window and under that character-change threshold.

So: tiny typo/format fixes are usually safe; big rewrites after you’ve hit “Post” are what will get flagged as a “major” edit / revision.

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