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Some days ago I suggested an edit to a question. I simply wanted to improve the title, which was very vague. I also removed some double spaces which were not needed, in an attempt to reach the minimum 6 characters.

As it turns out, one reviewer approved it, but it never got a second review. If I go to the review queues page I see that the Suggested Edit queue is empty. Still, if I open the question, it says "Thanks for your edit! This edit will be visible only to you until it is peer reviewed". So it says it's in the queue, but the queue is empty.

It's been stuck for 3 days now. What happened? It looks like a bug.

In case this is really a bug, I'd recommend that my edit is NOT reviewed until the staff can check what happened. So please don't!

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    I've approved your edit now. The new title is certainly more specific, but feels a bit verbose. I can't think of any obvious ways to shorten it though. – Ganesh Sittampalam♦ Aug 13 at 15:40
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So there isn't actually any bug here, and it takes some explanation of how the review queues work to get to why it's not a bug.

The review page is not a good indicator of whether your suggested edit is still pending.

The number of tasks displayed there is a live count of how many you, personally can review. That count does not include anything you own or tasks you've already reviewed. So for you, it should display 0 if there are no other available tasks, because you can't review your own edit.

Most review queues reserve tasks when opened.

When a user views the task for the first time, they start a 5-minute grace period where that task is specifically reserved to them to complete. This prevents tasks being assigned out to a bunch of users and leaving other users with an already-completed task because they weren't quite as fast. This reservation simply prevents it being given out to someone else who visits the review queue until the time expires, but others can still access it at any time with a direct link.

So users here who are just visiting the review page and seeing that it's not popping up when they try to review - it shouldn't, because people stopping by keep reserving it out to themselves and preventing it dropping as a normal task for anyone else.

This task just hadn't been reviewed yet.

One person did review it. But five people also skipped it. That's consistent with the number of people who have been active at all in the review queue over the past few days. You just got unlucky in that other reviewers didn't feel comfortable making a decision on that edit.

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    Five people skipped it? Wow! I thought it was easy to judge... Ok, thanks, sorry for the false alarm! Do I have to replace the "bug" tag with "support"? – Fabio Turati Aug 13 at 15:25
  • Oops, I should have clicked the "Show skipped reviews" box when I looked at the review history page. I was convinced that only one person had looked at it in the three days. Thanks for the help. – Ganesh Sittampalam♦ Aug 13 at 15:37
  • Why would five people skip it?!? It's a very straightforward edit. Weird. – curiousdannii Aug 14 at 15:17
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Agreed this seems to be a bug [edit: I was wrong :-)]. The admin page for the review also shows it as having been put in the queue, not removed from the queue, and only having 1 review. The reviewer wasn't a moderator. I'll see if any S.E. staff want to take a look, though I'm not sure how high a priority it would be.

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