Why are minor edits discouraged?

Question

From https://rpg.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/edit :

Try to make the post substantively better when you edit, not just change a single character. Tiny, trivial edits are discouraged.

So, basically, this covers most minor spelling and grammar fixes. These are not only discouraged, but actively blocked: in many cases, a spelling error cannot be corrected unless the person correcting it can find at least 5 other characters they can justify changing at the same time. Why is this done? If someone misspelled a word in an otherwise good question or answer, and another citizen corrects that misspelling, without changing anything else, then the latter person has left that question, and therefore this site as a whole, better than they found it. What is the upside to discouraging that?

Answer 1

Mostly because every edit bumps to post to the top of the home page.

But more importantly, 99.99% of the time something else in the post could use a cleanup and you should do that too while your there to save someone else the trouble in the future.

Note: this minor edit issue is only in place for those with <2000 reputation, in part to keep you from making a ton of single letter edits and getting the reputation for them.

So we have 3 reasons to prevent minor edits: all edits bump, there is always something else to do on a post, and to prevent gaming of the reputation system. Really the middle reason is the most important one though. The idea here is to create and curate a great resource for gamers. If we're spending time making trivial edits, we aren't serving that porpoise.