I am referring to this suggested-edit.

There were a few formatting issues that I fixed and I added relevant tags to the question. After my edit was rejected, an edit was made to the question. But the rejection message says:


I checked the revision history, but I could not find what mistake I made. I would appreciate if someone could point out what was wrong.

  • 8
    If you compare the suggested edit to the (currently) final version, that was edited by a diamond moderator, you'll see that grammar errors in the last paragraph were not fixed. Also, the tags that were added weren't relevant to the topic. – Cindy Meister Jan 7 at 5:47
  • 1
    The title also contained a lower case i. – BDL Jan 7 at 10:43

Only the user who rejected your edit can give you a full answer on why they did so.

But we can try to make an informed guess about their reasoning. Let's see all the differences between your suggested edit and the edit reviewer applied:

In both edits:

  • Proper capitalization of "I" in the first sentence.
  • Code formatting for the main code block, and to the couple of keywords in the closing sentence.
  • A minor difference in how code formatting was applied in the edits: you used "block" code formatting for single keywords (triple backtick ``` instead of a single backtick `).

Only in the reviewer's edit:

  • Grammar corrections on the closing paragraph. Even if you had properly capitalized the first "I" used, you didn't fix it in that sentence, and beyond that the sentence's grammar was stilted and awkward.

Only in your suggested edit:

  • Added the and tags.
  • Code formatting for the iframe keyword

Considering this, I would say the reviewer (a diamond moderator in this case, but any other user with editing privileges could have done the same) either made a mistake or disagreed with you adding these tags, and considered them irrelevant for the post.

Adding irrelevant tags is a standard rejection reason, but since they chose "reject and edit" that's not what was reported back to you.

Other possible rejection reason would be that they considered your suggested edit not complete enough, and that it had left too many errors for other users to fix.

In either case, I'm not sure I agree with that call.

While your edit was not as thorough as possible, it was a definitive improvement. The tags you added were appropriate, IMO; and your formatting and grammar corrections made the post a better one.

Maybe the moderator wanted to send a signal about submitting more complete edit suggestions, but in the process they removed useful tags and code formatting from iframe, which is an HTML keyword and not an English language word.

And it could be argued their edit was not complete enough either, since the opening sentence could use some tidying up, and left a grammar mistake on the title. And they removed good tags. Which I guess could make the "signal" more confusing.

All things being equal, I believe "improve edit" would have been a better choice here.

In the end, do not overthink this. Just try to make your edits as correct, complete and thorough as possible, and these will be generally approved. The occasional reject will still happen, because everybody is free to disagree, but it won't do you any lasting damage.

Taking a quick look at your suggested edit history, have a few pointers:

  • Remember to remove unnecessary noise (as greetings, "thanks", "I am new to... " statements, etc.). For example, as you could have done here. If you leave these around, it's more likely your suggestions will be rejected.
  • Trivial edits, like this one that only added a non-descriptive alt to an embedded image, are a generally a waste of time for everybody. This one got approved, but I would have rejected.
  • In general, try to leave more descriptive edit descriptions. E.g. "code formatting" does not describe this edit. I wouldn't use that as a rejection reason on itself, but a good edit description makes reviewing easier.
  • Do no add unnecessary markup. I've seen you adding <br> on several posts to add newlines, where simply adding a newline would do. When reviewing edits, this is distracting and can look like you are padding up the character count to get over the minimum character limit.
  • In general, try to be as thorough as possible with spelling/grammar fixes (within your language skills). While I understand it's not always easy when English is not your first language (it's not my first language either), I've seen cases with issues you were capable of correcting (like "I" capitalization, lack of spaces around punctuation, etc.) and were left behind.
  • 2
    Perhaps add something about enabling a spell checker in the browser? This will go a long way. In Firefox, the number of false positives can be kept to a minimum by "teaching" the spell checker on demand (right click on the word → "Add to dictionary"), especially words that are not included in its dictionary. Admittedly, it is far more cumbersome to enable a spell checker than it ought to be - you have to find the right file, download files, and go through scary warning dialogs. Example instruction. – Peter Mortensen Jan 9 at 15:47
  • 1
    I also have a wordlist... (For example, 61 variations of Raspberry Pi and 69 variations of Stack Overflow.) – Peter Mortensen Jan 9 at 15:59

You must log in to answer this question.

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