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Today I have seen that some low-rep. user has been suggesting edits to many posts. Generally, this is a good thing. However many of these posts were old (at least a month old), and often downvoted. The changes themselves were not always significant.

Since the review page does not tell you whether another user has reviewed and approved/rejected this, and most people would usually approve a reasonable grammatical/LaTeX edit (even without checking timestamps), many of the edits went through.

When something like that happens, and I feel reluctant to approve the edits, but I also feel that the user is acting badly, what sort of action should I take?

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You should open a thread on meta, asking for advice. Oh, wait.... – Gerry Myerson Nov 22 '12 at 1:05
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@Gerry: I once played the game of wait with a wall and won. I can wait... :-) – Asaf Karagila Nov 22 '12 at 1:08
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I think I know the user you are writing about. I've left a comment on one recent edit, asking said user to slow down, keep it to maybe three edits a day. But I think direct communication from a moderator may be in order. – Gerry Myerson Nov 22 '12 at 6:06
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@Gerry: I strongly agree with that. As a matter of fact the first thing I did after posting this thread was to flag it with the user details, to communicate to the moderators the case which brought this issue up. – Asaf Karagila Nov 22 '12 at 6:09
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If they continue, they will soon reach 1000 rep and need to find another avenue to get reputation. – robjohn♦ Nov 22 '12 at 8:48
@robjohn: I thought that you need a 3,000 rep threshold for that. – Asaf Karagila Nov 22 '12 at 8:50
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One can only gain 1000 reputation from suggested edits. – robjohn♦ Nov 22 '12 at 8:59
@robjohn: Oh. Well, either way this is still something to be addressed when done on such a short timespan. :-) – Asaf Karagila Nov 22 '12 at 9:00
As with the last time this happened, empirically the most effective response is to leave a comment politely asking the user to take it easy. @Gerry, perhaps you should turn your comment into an answer. – Rahul Narain Nov 22 '12 at 10:26
@Rahul, I made two comments in this thread --- but I think I know which one you mean. – Gerry Myerson Nov 22 '12 at 12:25
@Will: I disagree. The age of the post is a factor when weighing in the amount of changes. Just changing one letter is not a good enough reason to bump a two years old post. – Asaf Karagila Nov 22 '12 at 14:02
@Gerry: ...and that is why I sometimes hate talking with mathematicians! :-) – Asaf Karagila Nov 22 '12 at 14:02
@Asaf: While you say the age of the post should be a factor, it seems the community disagreed when you asked about it on meta. For what it's worth, I agree with your position, but it doesn't seem to be the consensus. – Rahul Narain Nov 23 '12 at 2:27
@Rahul: I completely forgot about that... :-) – Asaf Karagila Nov 23 '12 at 2:29
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@AsafKaragila I was tempted to write an answer to this, just because of how much I disagree with the importance you give to the age of a post. And saying that a post is old if it is older than a month makes this position even more extreme. I occasionally decide to do the required reading of some background material to be "entitled" to write an answer to an interesting question (so admittedly this situation is more typical for philosophy than for math), and such reading can easily exceed a month. – Thomas Klimpel Nov 25 '12 at 11:27
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up vote 10 down vote accepted

At Rahul's suggestion, comment becomes answer:

I left a comment on one recent edit, asking the user to slow down, maybe keep it to three edits a day. The user has responded favorably so, one hopes, problem solved.

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