This question has the badge "status-completed". But it still seems to be broken... can someone please explain how I can make an edit while there is another edit pending? I am neither able to make my edit, nor approve the pending edit. Do I just need more rep or is this still a bug?

I know about the "Improve Edit", do nothing, save workaround but it doesn't seem to be possible if I accidentally click "Approve". In my case, I spend a fair amount of time on Opencart questions, and due to the relative lack of activity it can take days or weeks for anything to happen to a pending edit. Since the question I linked above is tagged "status-completed" I'm assuming that there's actually a way through this but I haven't figured it out.

  • So your question is actually "How do I edit a question with a pending edit that I already Approved?" – Heretic Monkey Mar 13 '17 at 22:31
  • @MikeMcCaughan - it's either that, or "What was implemented to solve the question I linked" - which in theory would be the same thing - but I'm not entirely sure what "status-complete" signifies in this case since I can't see said feature - at least not at my rep. – billynoah Mar 13 '17 at 22:33
  • You can hack the URL, but that will reject the edit you voted to approve. Best bet is to choose improve edit before approving. – user4639281 Mar 13 '17 at 22:38
  • How do I improve edit in this case? I don't have a time machine and it doesn't seem to be an option any more. And what was implemented in the "status-complete" question I linked above? How do I "hack the URL"? I just want to make an edit - it shouldn't be this hard and I shouldn't be detained for clicking the intuitive thing. If the goal is to prevent careless "approvers" then there should be a way to say "hey, I'm paying attention and I really mean it" – billynoah Mar 13 '17 at 22:41
  • The question you're referencing concerned the ability to quickly approve edits; this one concerns editing after already hitting "approve". They're distinct questions, although the scenarios are similar. – Shog9 Mar 13 '17 at 22:55
  • Ok @Shog9 - So what was done? – billynoah Mar 13 '17 at 22:59
  • The addition of the "Improve Edit" button, @billynoah. – Shog9 Mar 13 '17 at 23:14
  • Ok thanks. Since that option disappears once you've clicked "Approve", I think we need a better solution. – billynoah Mar 13 '17 at 23:25

If you have edit privileges (i.e. more than 2k reputation for questions and answers), you can easily force an edit by any of the following methods.

With all methods of forcing an edit, saving your changes will override the current pending edit, causing the currently pending edit to be rejected by the Community user as an edit conflict. (example1, example 2).

1. Use the edit links from the revisions page.

If you go to the revisions page (click on the "edited X ago" link at the bottom middle of the post, to the left of the post user's information, or go to https://stackoverflow.com/posts/[postID]/revisions). Each revision has an "edit" link which allows direct editing of the specified version.

2. Use the "Force edit suggested reviews" user script1

The "Force edit suggested reviews" is a user script which adds a "force edit" link to any question or answer which has a pending edit. This allows you to bypass reviewing the suggested edit and go directly to editing the question/answer.

The links look like:

Force edit suggested reviews

The source of the GIF is the above stackapps question.

3. Use a bookmarklet2

Prior to knowing that I should look on Stack Apps for user scripts, when I encountered this issue, I made a bookmarklet that forces an edit of the question or answer which is the current URL.

The following bookmarklet will open a new tab to edit the question or answer which is in the current URL:


The following bookmarklet does the same thing, but replaces the contents of the current tab with the editor:


4. Manually go to the post's edit URL

You can manually navigate to the URL which causes the post to be edited. That URL looks like:


Where [postID] is the question or answer ID. You can get this ID from either the current URL, or from the share link under the post. From the share link, it will be the first number in the URL provided.

  1. User scripts are JavaScript based scripts that you can install into your browser to perform tasks that you desire (e.g. changing what is displayed on specific sites, adding options to pages, etc.). They are similar to extensions, or add-ons, which you can add to your browser. However, the potential for what they can do is less than an extension. In general, they are focused on changing, or enhancing, what is displayed in web pages.

    The code for user scripts is fully and easily viewable and editable through either of the two user script manager extensions mentioned below. There are other user script management extensions. They probably give you a similar level of transparency wrt. being able to view and edit the user scripts you install.

    User scripts are usually installed through a browser extension. The most popular are Tampermonkey (Chrome, Firefox, Opera Next, Safari, Microsoft Edge, Dolphin Browser, UC Browser, etc.) and Greasemonkey (Firefox).

    As Tiny Giany mentioned in comments, you can see the tag info for userscripts for more extensive information and links.

  2. Bookmarklets are installed by manually creating a bookmark in your browser and then editing it to have the "URL" (Chrome) or "Location" (Firefox) be the code shown here. It is activated by clicking on the bookmark.

Large portions oft this answer were copied from my answer to: "It's annoying to do a day's worth of suggested edit reviews and then not be able to process pending edits on questions".

  • These are some darn nice workarounds! – theMayer Feb 10 '18 at 3:21
  • Useful information thank you. It's unfortunate that the user script doesn't appear to be hosted on say GitHub. Presumably it has to be copied and pasted in? – Stephen Kennedy May 19 '18 at 13:36
  • Additional workaround: Clicking CTRL+Edit (Windows, for reference it's the keybinding for opening a link in a new tab) seems to work too. Breaks inline editing, but it doesn't require copy-pasting or a userscript. – Zoe Sep 21 '18 at 15:28
  • @Zoe Please, provide a bit more detail. I assumed that by "edit" you mean the "edit (1)" link that is below the post (on a question below the tags), where it normally says "edit". When there is a suggested edit, one you've never seen, or one you've approved or rejected, that link goes to the suggested edit review. No interaction I tried with that link, with userscripts disabled, resulted in anything other than going to the suggested edit, or having the suggested edit in a popup. – Makyen Sep 21 '18 at 16:14
  • Weird, it seems to not work any more. It used to, I assumed it still did when I commented. – Zoe Sep 21 '18 at 16:19

"Click more slowly" is probably the sanest answer here - you can't go back and change a review, so think twice before submitting one. Of course, that doesn't help you after you've already clicked "Approve", but... For next time.

For now, just wait. Edits don't tend to sit in the queue all that long; even for Opencart the median time to resolution is about 45 minutes with the very worst case in the past 90 days being an edit that took 10 hours to be reviewed.

Probably also worth mentioning here that you can specifically opt to review suggested edits in a tag by setting your filter preferences (link at the top of review). You can also filter review tasks (without setting a preference) by use of the filter-tags querystring: https://stackoverflow.com/review/suggested-edits?filter-tags=opencart - feel free to pass that along to anyone you think would want to help review edits in the tag...

  • 1
    Thanks - I don't do review queue that often and when I do it's filtered for close votes on opencart tags - which is where I find I can add the most value. Decisions about edits are only something I address when i'm looking at a question and notice someone has proposed an edit. Since it's not something I'm in the habit of doing, I haven't conditioned my brain to do the exact opposite of what it looks like I should do which is click "Approve". – billynoah Mar 13 '17 at 22:58
  • So.. how can i "hack the url" as someone mentioned? If I can't do something here and now I'm unlikely to come back and find it tomorrow - it's be nice to have a real option to take action in the present. – billynoah Mar 13 '17 at 22:59
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    The edit URL for any post is /posts/<id>/edit, @billynoah. That'll take you to the full editor - if you submit an edit, it'll override any that are pending. – Shog9 Mar 13 '17 at 23:15
  • I get "Your changes are identical to a pending edit" when I try to use that url. Am I expected to make some arbitrary change so it will be "different"? This all seems very hacky - not what I expect from SO – billynoah Mar 13 '17 at 23:19
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    If you didn't have any other urgent changes to make, why would you bother doing any of this? You could've just gone and done something else; the edit would've gone through review normally. – Shog9 Mar 13 '17 at 23:27
  • That's correct. I thought I could do the URL hack - push the existing edit, and THEN make my edit. Now I understand what you meant about overriding the pending edit - it ceases to exist but somehow it still stands in the way as being identical - which doesn't really make any sense either because once I make my edit the pending edit is gone forever regardless. – billynoah Mar 13 '17 at 23:35
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    It does if you consider a more involved edit; imagine a large addition or substantial re-write - doing that "trick" would essentially be taking someone else's work without giving them credit. That's... discouraged. – Shog9 Mar 13 '17 at 23:48
  • What I meant is that it doesn't make sense for it to be gone. There should be a way to commit the edit without erasing it and/or taking credit. I understand everything you're saying and while I appreciate the option of this hack it seems less than ideal for the reasons you just outlined. – billynoah Mar 13 '17 at 23:51
  • It's not "gone" - you can still find it. But it's not a part of the post's history either. – Shog9 Mar 14 '17 at 0:01
  • @Shog9 average reaction to substantial rewrite is reject - so do you suggest that letting reject happen for big edit is better than improve and forcefully accept valid change? – Alexei Levenkov Mar 14 '17 at 2:40

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