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Edits made by users who do not have edit privileges are placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

E.g., I edited someone else's answer. but changed my mind. If I'd edited my own question/answer, there would be a "Rollback" button, but there's no such button in the scenario I'm describing (at least none that I can see).

This is more relevant today because users can only have at most five edits waiting in the queue, and allowing one to cancel an edit would permit them to free up one of their five pending edits for something else.

Is there a way to remove one's edit from the peer review queue?

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5 Answers 5

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This is currently not possible.

A single rejected edit will not penalize you, but note that having too many rejected edits in a short period will block you from suggesting any more edits for a few days.

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  • 19
    A sufficient amount of rejected suggested edits can block the user from suggesting more. Worth noting, but not really a concern in this case.
    – user50049
    Commented Sep 5, 2011 at 3:21
  • "In any way"? I thought enough rejections led to an automatic 7-day ban. Does this post need to be updated to reflect changes over the past four years?
    – Damian Yerrick
    Commented May 6, 2015 at 16:49
  • @TimPost I made an edit, but then I realized I didn't read correctly, so it will get rejected for sure. What do you mean it's really not a concern?
    – Honey
    Commented Aug 23, 2016 at 19:36
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    @Honey An edit that's surely to be rejected is nothing to worry about. A bunch of them in a row is :) The system won't penalize the occasional mistake - we all do that. Time is also a factor, the system will forget all about an oops relatively soon.
    – user50049
    Commented Aug 23, 2016 at 19:46
  • :) I already had 2 rejects before. But overall I have ~%50 approvals. I know it's an edge case, but still its one that can easily be avoided if the system is there to handle. This post is already 5 years old btw. Does it always take that long for something to change?
    – Honey
    Commented Aug 23, 2016 at 20:01
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    I like the "This is currently not possible." line. More than 7 years passed.
    – Georgy
    Commented Nov 30, 2018 at 11:28
  • @TimPost I also requested a similar feature on Physics Meta SE in this question. Are there any chances that this feature will be incorporated in near future? If not, then why? If yes, then when? Thanks!
    – user668734
    Commented Jan 1, 2020 at 13:34
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This would be quite helpful -- not allowing a cancel of an edit doesn't give you a good feeling about knowing that it will be rejected, and it has to take a search here, far far away from the land of not-meta-sites to actually realise that it doesn't actually negatively impact your rep in any way.

And if it is approved, that's worse, because you need to go back to the question (if you even remember what it was) to rollback your edit -- and presumably wait for it to be approved/rejected - again.

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Another reason to revoke your edit is, to be allowed to submit a more substantial edit. Currently, I have five edits in the queue, and some of them are clearly going to be rejected. If there were a way to remove them from the queue, then I could make a few more edits, which are going to be more contributing than those that are about to get rejected (eventually).

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    If it's to the same post, you can edit your suggested edit, and those edits will be folded into your prior suggestion.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Nov 4, 2018 at 22:21
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I have made countless edits with mistakes, and I have always able to revert them.

If you notice the incorrect edit just after clicking "Save Edits", then you can fix it by going back to the previous page, or clicking "edit" again. If you do this, you will be redirected back to the editing page, where it will be saved at the last edit you made. Just make your necessary changes and "Save changes" again. You'll effectively be editing your suggested edit; any edits you make will be merged into your prior suggestion.

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    After an edit suggestion of mine had gained one reject vote, I tried editing again, manually reverting all of my changes. But this gave an error "Nothing appears to have changed." and I could not save the edit.
    – Olli Niemitalo
    Commented Dec 9, 2020 at 9:16
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    This should be the accepted answer.
    – Dan Dascalescu
    Commented Nov 22, 2022 at 19:41
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    This seems to be a misunderstanding. By this, you still have to make the edit. You cannot just drop the whole edit, but that was the question. Instead, what you write about here is just the way you change an ongoing edit - which you can do as long as it was not approved or rejected.
    – questionto42
    Commented Sep 10, 2023 at 18:20
  • In other words, the workaround is to update your edit to roll back your now-abadoned changes, but still change something in the post. In the worst case, propose useless but also harmless changes (like changing "I have" to "I've"), and hope that you don't get it approved by some robo-reviewer.
    – tripleee
    Commented Sep 11, 2023 at 14:47
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Workaround: if you cannot drop an edit, try finding a better wording or some grammar or spelling error for the heading or the body, or try finding another tag for it or a tag that should be dropped. One thing you can try is to add some keyword for a better search output on the internet or inside the Stack Exchange.

And even if you change just one letter, you can then write in the edit note that you mainly wanted to change that tiny mistake "x" (--> needed change) and only added the change "y" to get enough changes for an edit (--> sort of a bonus change), and you will often get it approved, and the approver will often just unedit the bonus change but leave the needed change.

This is just a workaround, but if you just try to avoid a rejected edit, it is the best choice so far if you cannot redact an edit.

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