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Based on past experience of some of my earliest rejected edits (1 and 2), I would have thought that this suggested edit should have been rejected.

Adding information from the comments (made by the OP) to the original question is an accepted practice, I believe. However, adding third-party experience is usually frowned upon. As an example, in my first two cases, I wasn't changing the authors intent but either, in the case of the first rejected edit, a link to the library's update notes or, in the case of the second rejected edit, adding a product link. Both of which were factual, un-deniably related, information and/or links - whereas this recently accepted suggested edit seems to be more of a supposition.

So, is it acceptable to edit in one's own (possibly relevant) experiences to another user's post?

Sorry, after re-reading, this does seem to read like I am moaning about a couple of my ancient rejected edits... just to clarify, that is not so. It's about the recent edit (which was quickly fixed, and I hadn't realised - therefore this entire post is superfluous to requirements.)

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I do a lot of the edit queue reviews because it is something I prioritise, and my practice is the (I think pretty orthodox SE wise) one you describe -- editing in stuff you thought of is usually not appropriate; this is what comments are for.

WRT that particular question, I approved it with modifications. That's the difference here between "Approve" and "Edit", but what's shown in detail is the original suggested edit which contains the line with a link beginning "It seems a recent OS update...", which is the line I removed (and put it in a comment on the question instead).

I just edited again when I noticed there was a superfluous "Can anyone help? Thanks!" at the end, but if you look at the previous edit from ~6 hours ago that offending line never made it then either.

In retrospect I should have just rejected that whole edit, because sans the injected comment the changes did not add up to anything worthwhile.

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  • Thanks for replying, I too thought that the grammatical fixes were great, it was just the permitted addition of the It seems that a recent OS update... which surprised me - given the way it changed the post's possible intent/reasoning... Ah, ha! Which I now see that you then removed in a subsequent edit (#3). :-) Therefore please disregard my Meta question. Apologies :-) Commented Nov 24, 2018 at 14:12
  • Seems when you choose "improve edit" there are two revisions created at the same time, the changes you make are considered changes to the revision produced by the original edit even though that revision never existed independently. Or perhaps it did for N ms ;) Commented Nov 24, 2018 at 18:29
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I know this is not a popular view, but I regard any editing of a question which changes the content as unacceptable.

I will edit to correct code formatting, and occasionally delete superfluous comments, but no one can second guess what the OP is asking.

If you cannot answer a question, a comment is acceptable. Correcting grammar or spelling is arrogant.

I will add warnings to obsolete or inaccurate answers to prevent other users from doing the wrong thing, but editing questions is hard to justify.

I have had experience of questions I asked (which were migrated without my consent) and edited by arrogant *** to say things I would never have stated - resulting in a flood of downvotes because of the offensive edits.

PS I would have rejected both edits. The first should be a comment, the second trivial .

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  • +1 I accept that both of my edits should have been rejected (sorry if that wasn't clear), and I have reviewed and edited accordingly, since then. My issue is with the recent edit which added the supposed reason for the OP's problem. Commented Nov 24, 2018 at 14:15
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    I wouldn't go as far as saying that correcting grammar is arrogant (in fact, I believe we should make it easier for users to fix trivial spelling mistakes), but I agree with the rest of what you said. Commented Dec 5, 2018 at 10:07

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