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I'm not sure why this proposed edit was rejected; the reason selected was "this edit changes too much in the original post" but I wouldn't have thought that would apply when my original version of the answer explicitly invited the OP to add his example code.

Did the voters simply not notice the invitation? Or are collaborative answers like this discouraged? Should I have marked it community wiki?

(The OP has now posted his code as a separate answer, so everything's sorted as far as that question is concerned; I ask for future reference.)

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  • Because there's so much code (without a clear explanation of what it is), it makes it hard to read.
    – Richard J. Ross III
    Mar 2, 2013 at 2:06
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    The separate answer is the right way to handle this. Even if the poster of the original answer make his answer CW, the edit suggester still wouldn't have had enough rep to edit the answer directly.
    – user102937
    Mar 2, 2013 at 2:10
  • @RobertHarvey: I'd have been able to approve it though, wouldn't I? So long as it hadn't already been rejected before I got to it?
    – Harry Johnston
    Mar 2, 2013 at 2:12

1 Answer 1

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Should I have marked it community wiki?

In short, yes, you should have done this if you wanted other users to be editing your post for content.

The idea of the edit system in SE sites is that when you edit any non-CW post, you edit it for everything but the content. You fix spelling, grammar, formatting issues, correct clear typos or minor mistakes but ensure that the intent of the original author is maintained. You shouldn't be adding entirely new content, or editing something that the OP feels is correct even if you believe it is not.

That's not all true of a CW post. For a CW post it's a way of saying, "other people can edit the content of this post, feel free to add entirely new tangents of information I left out, go into more detail for existing content, etc." Since that's what you wanted; for another person to be able to come in and add a significant amount of new content that you didn't have in your answer, you should have marked the post as CW. Also note that being marked CW means that the rep requirement for non-reviewed edits is significantly reduced, although in this case the user has less than 100 rep, so it would still need to be reivewed.

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    (Just noting) There are exceptions, for instance old highly up-voted answers that were once correct, but a few years later ... not so correct any longer. In those cases, it's better to fix the information that has naturally floated to the top by editing (or suggesting an edit), and leaving an optional comment alerting the original author that you've made a correction they may want to review. There's usually not a lot of scope change in those questions, but sometimes it can be less than trivial.
    – Tim Post
    Mar 2, 2013 at 5:39
  • @TimPost Yeah, but those are kind of an edge case, and it's not really relevant in this particular case, so I intentionally left that out to keep the answer simpler.
    – Servy
    Mar 2, 2013 at 5:49

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