Infinite looping the MOSS OOTB approval workflow

A few days ago, I noticed something weird with the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server out of the box workflow, most specifically with the workflow option to start when an item is modified. I was trying to set up the Approval Workflow on a SharePoint List with content approval activated. I first set up the workflow to ask for approval when a new item is submitted to the list. It worked fine but we also needed to ask for approval when an item was updated (e.g. the writer made a mistake and notice it after the approver did his job, thus he modify the item that as a result needs to be approved a second time). I fired up the workflow configuration page and checked the infamous “Start Workflow when an item is modified” in the start options. And from then everything went wrong. Whenever an approvers did his job by approving an item, the workflow would be launched again and a new approval task would be added to the workflow task list. I tried tweaking the workflow, modifying the tasks list used … but nothing would do the trick, the workflow was stuck in an infinite loop whenever the “Start on item edit” was activated.

And that’s when it hit me, changing the approval status of an item seemed to be considered as a modification of the item itself.

I am still surprised by what I can’t help but see as a major flaw of SharePoint. I definitely don’t think that the approval status of an item is part of the item itself, it is only a SharePoint information about OUR piece of information (the item).

I also was surprised by how few people seems to react to this fact based on a few google search I made. Yet it seems other people faced the same problem (http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointworkflow/thread/62f5921d-9d02-4924-a61f-97ad169d1043/ and http://unitedsupplyco.sharepointsite.net/publicfacing/bensblog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=34 ). If you have any information about this subject, I would enjoy to know it.