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Should questions or answers on questions that are closed be edited, even if the question is closed and the edit does not change anything about the reason it's closed?

Example: This answer was just edited, which I saw in the review queue. It certainly improves the answer, but since the answer doesn't really have to exist on SE at all (because the question is off-topic), should this edit be made?
In my understanding, the only reason that the edit option for a closed question is not greyed out is so that it can be edited to make it comply with the SE rules.

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    Yes, all content (to some extent maybe even deleted posts) should be edited to improve it. If this edit doesn't cause a question to be re-opened maybe the next one will. You don't want to have a question to be re-opened only to find that 42 editors kept their edits in a backlog and now they have to apply their edits in a rush.
    – rene
    Nov 20, 2017 at 13:53
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    The question to me here is "does it make the post better?" - While it dosen't help reopen the post, it does help add attribution to the source, which is always nice Nov 20, 2017 at 13:55

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For questions closed less than five days ago, the answer is no; an edit will push the question into the Reopen Votes review queue, but this will happen only once. So, the risk is that you spoil the only chance the author has to fix their question and have it reopened, especially if the author hasn't enough reputation (250 on a non-beta site) to cast reopen votes on their own question. There's a new but already declined feature request which proposes to make reviewers aware of this.

For all answers, and for questions which have been closed five or more days ago (and don't get pushed into the reopen queue after an edit, see here), I'd say that the closed state of the question doesn't influence my decision to approve or reject an edit. Any edit which (significantly) improves a post, without side effects as described in the first paragraph, is welcome.

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    That is pretty complex guidance in your 1st paragraph.
    – rene
    Nov 20, 2017 at 13:59

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