I mostly only vote on releases I own because my collection is hardly my only subscription.
But even though, I’m sometimes too late to vote.
The problem with cover arts is that some people will upload random square pictures (from internet search) to random releases, just to tag their files with any good enough image (they don’t care if they broke that specific edition).
This is why I’ve been harping on about malicious uploads. If no one catches these edits when they happen, the bad actors are emboldened to do more and/or worse.
If I want to focus on certain types of edits for voting, I go to the Vote page. If one of the links there doesn’t exactly fit my needs, I can start with one of them, then click the “Refine this search” link and add additional filters. Whatever filter set I come up with can be bookmarked.
But again, why is cover art special in this regard?
Any editor can add garbage URLs or release labels to entities, which are applied immediately without any voting or highlighting. And adding URLs is something SEO spambots really want to do, whereas problematic image uploaders are almost always misguided but not actively malicious human users.
And surely nobody wants to go back to nearly everything being voting edits?
I rarely have cover art edits in my subscription.
I most often have relationship edits and merge recordings to review.
But I’m happy to have cover art edits because they are easy to review and I see mistakes there, more often than spam URL on my releases (never happened).
Maybe you’re just subscribed to too many things?
I remember when it was not possible to subscribe to release collections, I had too many edits to review.
Or here is a review search that you could use: Open edits in my subscription, not yet vote, no Add cover art edits.
I know how to use the search feature.
All I’m saying is that I seriously doubt that I’m the only one who has bookmarks for the search feature that exclude cover art edits.
I also use a few predefined searches in my favourites, but I don’t exclude cover art edits from my main owned release subscription queue, because I want to keep my releases correct, as much as possible.
Current setting is good because, with searches, it can fit anyone’s needs. 
Also, bad cover arts tend to be uploaded maybe even more often when there is no cover arts yet.
But maybe if cover art is added by the recent original release add editor, it could be automatic.
But, actually, I think it’s already supposed to be the case, no?
In general, even though many of these edits do not receive votes, the obviously wrong ones are easier to spot this way, as others have argued.
This might just be me, but I gave up on reviewing “Add cover art” edits a long time ago due to a combination of reasons:
As an additional argument against making them auto-edits, just consider how many editors take the current content of the database at face value for their edits, without checking the edit history. Having wrong cover art can then lead to misinformed edits further down the line.
From a quick search (release additions, cover art additions), I don’t think that’s accurate. There were a little over 300 “Add Release” edits from beginners in the last two days (arbitrary timespan), compared just over 200 “Add Cover Art” ones. Given that most users probably also add cover art for a release they created, I don’t see any preference for adding cover art from new users here.
It’s about not scaring away potential new contributors. Nothing demotivates more than putting in some work in your free time, only for a more experienced community member to tell you that you did everything wrong. Wikipedia suffers from the high barrier to entry created by their strict rules quite a lot.
Fair enough, but any experienced voter can tell you about the many editors who sign up, add poorly researched/inaccurate cover art all over the place and do not contribute much to the database further than that.
You’re quoting me out of context there, and you’re responding to a post that literally says “I stopped voting on these edits to avoid an excessive number of “No” votes”. 
When a more experience contributor tells me I got something wrong, I’m not demoralized. I’m determined to make sure I don’t repeat my mistakes.
If a new editor isn’t determined to improve their contributions, and corrections from the helpful experienced editors we have here discourage them, I really don’t have a problem with that. After years (a couple decades, really) of distrusting online music databases because of the rampant erroneous information in them, I really don’t have a problem if the peer-review process weeds out those who don’t care enough to improve their contributions.
The problematic Add cover art edits are more those that add random image to random existing releases, and without edit notes.
But those that come together with a new release.
Btw everyone I get that not everyone agrees with my method of avoiding no votes if the editor has made a good faith effort to add an image (obviously I leave notes and talk to them…), but please stop making a deal of it
I spend a huge chunk of my voting time approving, commenting and improving cover art (and - rarely - voting no on very incorrect ones) and the world hasn’t ended yet 
Missing edit notes is a separate concern. I also think they should be mandatory (or at least very strongly encouraged, e.g. with a confirmation popup when trying to submit an edit without one).
But this is unrelated to the edits being auto-edits. I often see auto-edited relationship additions without edit notes (and from experienced editors no less).
maybe it could be just for “beginner” editors then?
(either way, i’m not opposed to any of the given options, just giving a suggestion)
I’m going to +1 for the status quo. It lets people see the arts immediately, but still gives folk a chance to review and vote accordingly.
I don’t find them cluttering up my voting list bothersome.
I never even thought about the possibility of people uploading wrong cover art on purpose so I chose always auto edit, but it seems I was a bit too naive. So I agree that new cover art on existing releases should be peer reviewed.
On the other hand, I think some cases allow for an auto-edit possibility, like adding a new release or releases with no artwork at all.
Specially on new releases, I still can’t grasp the reasoning for cover art being the only thing that’s not an auto-edit for them.
i agree with Totosaurio. i think adding coverart should ideally fall under the “this is an auto-edit as long as the entity was created less than 24 hours ago by this same editor” rule of most other release edits. i’m sure that’s easier said than done though 
but honestly i don’t have a strong opinion either way! it’s not super inconvenient or annoying to me that a lot of edits are add coverart ones. i like seeing them and i like voting on them
Art may not be an auto-edit, but the art is immediately available. Which is the reason the other items are auto-edits. Art has that special “instant access, but still being checked status” partly because of those rare sabotages.
It’s still really inconsistent, and I’m surprised people are not more confused by this.
I am subscribed to quite a few artists myself and I do regularly look through the edits, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen an actually intentionally malicious edit. Non-cover art edits are also the significant majority of all the edits I voted against/commented on. Specifically for cover art, the only problems I sometimes notice is beginners not uploading the full resolution versions, but since you have to know how to obtain those (e.g. userscripts) this is really not something you can hold against people.
