I sometimes have a problem with whether to approve edits or not (or, indeed, whether to make such edits myself). According to this page
Tiny, trivial edits are discouraged
but the same page also says editing is encouraged to
fix grammatical or spelling mistakes.
If the meaning is perfectly clear without an edit to fix it, is this fix encouraged or does it class as trivial? Do we have a policy? Also, what is the disadvantage of making 'trivial' edits?
The Stack Exchange software and policies like this were originally developed for Stack Overflow, which is a very large site that needs policies like this to protect the users from spending too much time on things that don't help the site. Here on Japanese.SE, we have a much smaller site, and the burden of a "trivial" edit here or there is close to zero.
I think trivial edits would only become a problem if someone suggests a very large number of edits that don't really help anything. If something like that happens, we can always deal with it then by rejecting the edits. Otherwise, I think we should welcome little edits here and there, as long as they make the site a better place.
Just about everyone on this site is working with a language they're not native in, either English or Japanese, or even both. Fixing typos and such might seem like it doesn't matter much, but it can make things easier for people to understand, even if it seems clear to you without the edit, and so I would almost never reject an edit that fixed a spelling or grammatical mistake (unless there was something else wrong with the edit). I think even small edits like that are good and help the site.
As for your own edits, you might consider looking at the post you're editing and seeing if there's anything else that needs fixing – formatting, spelling, typos, tags, anything. If everything else looks good, I'd go ahead and make the edit anyway. Just use your own judgment, and I think it'll be okay.
