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I've come across this problem many times and it's very frustrating.

I improve a suggested-edit, and when I submit it, I get the error box that says the original edit suggestion has already been edited, and my edit must be more substantial. It's probably because the post was already edited by the original edit suggestion, and was meanwhile approved. It should treat my edit as if I had gone into the question and edited it. The reason I'm improving it is almost always because I am being more substantial. How about letting the edit get improved and approved?

Example, suggested-edit:

Suggested Edit

Example, my edit:

My Edit

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  • Sorry I couldn't word it better, very frustrated after spending a few minutes to clean things up and see it all go to waste.
    – Lance Roberts
    Commented Apr 6, 2013 at 7:13
  • Can you add an example? Which post, what the suggested edit was, what you were changing about it, etc.? I've improved many edits and have never come across this.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Apr 6, 2013 at 7:15
  • Could it be that meanwhile the suggested edit was ONLY approved by other reviewers?
    – Arjan
    Commented Apr 6, 2013 at 7:19
  • Yes, it happens because while I was working on it, other reviewers approved it, so the suggested is now the reality, but it should treat my edit as if I had gone into the question and edited it (which is what I end up having to do in this case).
    – Lance Roberts
    Commented Apr 6, 2013 at 7:20
  • Note, in reference to my comment above, it might not actually be because of this, but just some other kind of race condition.
    – Lance Roberts
    Commented Apr 6, 2013 at 7:43
  • What I usually do when this happens is to copy my edit to clipboard. Then I check the edit that prevented mine to learn what was changed. Eventually I learn that the edit includes/removes something I overlooked. If so, I will incorporate my edit into the new review. If not, I just paste it over.
    – Gordon
    Commented Apr 6, 2013 at 8:09
  • @AnnaLear Reported last August, status-review for 6­–8 months already. Could you prod the devs a bit?
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Apr 6, 2013 at 11:46
  • @Gilles Yeah, I'll see what I can do.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Apr 6, 2013 at 15:53
  • 1
    This is not a duplicate.
    – Lance Roberts
    Commented Aug 15, 2013 at 13:51

1 Answer 1

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6

The thing is, the system determines "Substantiality" by "How many characters were changed in total", so if the original edit added 50 characters, and your edit added 50 but removed 20, the original edit is considered more substantial.

That is a problem

In my opinion, "Improve" should always be more substantial by definition, and even if not, count the number of added/removed characters independently and use that to determine which is more substantial.

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