13

'Tis the day before Christmas and I've found a reason to have a whinge. This has been discussed before, but there are still bits to work on.

Can we please get a commitment from the team to do something with the UX of improving suggested edits? My edit improvement on this suggestion was rejected:

(name removed) already edited the body of this post; your edit must be more substantive to override the current edit.

I'm not sure I was competing at all - the name obliterated from the image above was that of the person who suggested the edit, as far as I can tell there were no competing editors at the time.

As it currently stands, if my improvement is not considered "substantive" enough then my improvements are not accepted. Here are my issues for which I would like a tissue:

  • I've got a reasonable rep, and I've invested a reasonable amount of time in the past to editing and improving posts. I no longer do it for the rep or the badges (or the fame or the women...).

  • If I've taken the time to hit that Improve button then there are some improvements that can be made. Even if my improvement is only small, it still leads to better quality.

  • In this particular case I was correcting a spelling error in the title and slightly changing the formatting. The formatting change can be ignored, but spelling shouldn't be.

  • If you want me to help with reviewing edits and I want to improve one, don't force me to play a game and give me no real clues as to what I need to do — what will be considered more substantive? Why can't my improvement be merged with the original suggestion?

Yes, I know that I can wait for the suggested edit to be finalised then come back and make the changes I intended, but that relies on me being nice enough to both keep the tab active and come back some time later to make the edit. The reality is that unless the post has really bad problems still (in which case I'd reject the suggestion), I will never be back to fix or improve it.

Can we either have some clear guidelines on more substantive, or for more experienced users improving the suggestions of (much) newer members can we just accept my improvement anyway, i.e. get rid of the more substantive check?

Improve this question
3
  • 4
    I think it's just counting characters change, but keep in mind that changing even one letter in a word cause the whole word to be counted.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Dec 23, 2013 at 22:17
  • 1
    If someone else edits the post before I get my edit in, I generally look at the other person's edits first, before imposing my version of events. You can even open another tab to check their edits without losing yours.
    – user102937
    Commented Dec 23, 2013 at 22:25
  • 6
    -1 for the frowned upon footer!
    – Taryn
    Commented Dec 23, 2013 at 22:35

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2

This means your edit is competing with another edit which has not yet been approved or was made since you started editing. Your edit can only override the other edit if it is larger (by some measure which is not infallible).

If you have the rep you can approve/reject/improve the existing edit or just wait for the existing edit to be aproved/rejected and then see if there is anything more that needs to be done

Improve this answer
4
  • I'm not sure I was competing at all - the name obliterated from the image above was that of the person who suggested the edit, as far as I can tell there were no competing editors at the time. My point is that my improvement simply added to the suggestion (i.e. didn't rewrite it altogether) and waiting till it's approved/rejected is not a viable option, unless it's really egregious (which I would reject outright) then I'll never come back to that post.
    – slugster
    Commented Dec 24, 2013 at 1:17
  • @slugster Thats interesting, how many characters was your edit? Perhaps the usual 6 character rules apply even when its an 'improve'
    – Richard Tingle
    Commented Dec 24, 2013 at 11:28
  • It wasn't huge - a single character in the title and a few characters in the body. The characters in the body weren't that important, but a single character change can still be an important spelling correction. I think there's still some room for improvement in the area, the UX certainly gets in your way if it deems you've not done "enough".
    – slugster
    Commented Dec 24, 2013 at 11:33
  • @slugster (don't disagree on the minimum character issue) the message actually seems incorrect in this case as well, since you were improving an edit rather than editing at the same time. Presumably in that case even after the edit was improved you still couldn't make your own edit (unless you made extra unnecessary edits to get over 6 characters)
    – Richard Tingle
    Commented Dec 24, 2013 at 11:37

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .