I'll give the backstory. I recently installed Sass on my Mac and thought it would be more complicated than that, but just out of curiosity I tried the same procedure as with addition of ssh connection command and, lo and behold, it works perfectly.

I found an article where the answer provided is absolutely correct, but one step he provides is not necessary, Installing Compass & Sass on Dreamhost

The top command is saying installing Sass is no longer necessary. However I don't know if this is where I'd use edit.

(I've only seen people correct my grammar on questions and answers.)

Thank you all. I now have enough to leave a comment.

Do not edit that answer. First, are you absolutely, definitely sure sass is no longer necessary? If so, then either accumulate 50 reputation and leave a comment under the answer or, alternately, post your own answer with your references about the up-to-date information. That may give you enough rep to comment next time around. –  Frédéric Hamidi Jun 16 at 22:30
I am looking for documentation from dream host but im going off of a tutorial to install sass on mac which is essentially the same where he says its not longer necessary and sass has worked perfectly for me but thats just what some guy from online says, I haven't found any official documentation stating this for sure but I can confirm it installs sass files during compass install I read it :)... during the install –  Snymax Jun 16 at 22:33
That's fine. Your package manager is apparently resolving the dependency, but neither of us can tell whether that will be true on all platforms. When in doubt, always leave the existing answer alone :) –  Frédéric Hamidi Jun 16 at 22:36
Can we clarify what the "edit" constitutes? It would be wrong to remove the step as it may be required for some environment/version, but modifying the answer to say a step is potentially optional (with details in comments?) improves the answer. –  Kevin Hogg Jun 18 at 12:04

5 Answers 5

No: do not edit others' answers unless you are fixing spelling/grammar or formatting. Additional or supplementary information to an answer should be given in comments if you are not the owner.

You have 36 rep, so you only need 14 more to be able to comment everywhere. That is seven suggested edits or two upvotes on an answer that you could post on that question with your newfound knowledge.

This might be a well intentioned answer, but your opening statement is wrong. Editing answers that are factually incorrect is perfectly acceptable. The answer isn't "their's" - well, technically it is, but you're free to edit it. It's creative commons, not dull-and-boring commons. That said, we tend to place higher scrutiny on the accuracy of edits than we do of answers. For example, in this case, there are doubts that it is correct for all cases, so a comment is more appropriate. If someone had "Because integers are 16 bytes in Java, we can assume ..." we'd want to edit that post haste. –  corsiKa Jun 17 at 22:45
@corsiKa Well, I haven't been here long, but I'd come to the assumption that that sort of action should be implemented via a new answer or an upvote to one with the correct information. I assumed that wrong answers were to be downvoted and corrected with a comment. –  AstroCB Jun 17 at 22:49
It's a delicate balance - it all depends on if you can fix the errors while keeping the true intent of the post. If you can't salvage the post, then absolutely - downvote (perhaps with comments explaining) and post your own. If it can be salvaged, though, that's the best solution. A lot of people won't read comments to see if it's right or wrong, and wrong answers get upvoted very often. –  corsiKa Jun 17 at 22:52
I have to disagree (my own position is mostly the same as @corsiKa 's). Consider the case of a good accepted answer with lots of upvotes that becomes partially obsolete; deleting it would be harmful (it's still mostly good), downvoting would be wrong (and useless), commenting would serve little purpose (few bother reading comments to high-rep, accepted answer). I say "comment, then amend". –  lserni Jun 17 at 23:41

Depending on how sure I was of the correctness of my edit (and how much time I happened to have on my hands to follow the matter), I would either add a comment stating that step so-and-so

  • may be superfluous in the following circumstances, which I verified: ...
  • may be superfluous.
  • is, I believe, superfluous
  • is superfluous according to documentation: http://...

After a suitable time to allow the original poster to verify and/or refute my claim and/or provide an even better or more comprehensive answer, I might also edit the answer itself so that it reads, say,

  • step 4
  • step 5 -- update: this may be superfluous (see comments)
  • step 6

This way, whoever reads the answer and can't be bothered to also read the comments before blindly following the recipe has, at least, a reasonable chance of not doing something superfluous.

Of course, the more important or dire the consequences, the more I would go from "non-intervention" to "quick-intervention".

Should my claim be refused (not refuted) and assuming I cared (which I mostly do), I might also/instead supply an answer of my own, with my own setup and test cases. This way, if it happens that the step in question is superfluous in some setups but not in others, readers would get a chance of trying both solutions. If I just removed the step, I'd be doing a favour to anyone with a setup compatible to mine... but everyone else wouldn't thank me.

Additionally (I had this happen to me a couple of times), indicating that a step may be superfluous can serve as a telltale that a given process or subsystem has a not-so-well-defined behaviour regarding some specific component. This in turn could help people sorting out a problem with that component, even if they have little use for the specific solution.

Giving both pro and con about the extra step yields more benefit than giving either alone.

+1 because this does not seem too intrusive depending on the circumstation, but it's really a case-by-case basis. I would be annoyed if someone edited an answer of mine and he's in fact just mistaken or I don't agree with his thinking. So I think this should only be done if it's a fairly sure thing. –  Camilo Martin Jun 19 at 8:00
Concur. Elsewhere, it has happened to me that I was sure of something and still I was wrong. That's why I'd wait after a comment before editing; I intensely dislike antagonizing good people. Also, if there's interest in the question, chances are that somebody else will oblige and save me the trouble :-) –  lserni Jun 19 at 11:43

Nope, that is not a good idea.

Leave that answer as it is and post your answer. You don't know why that step is included there in the first place. Perhaps that step could be the key for some to solve their problems.

So that means that for some the step may be (or was) useful, for someone else it seems not to be. The best solution seems to me to so indicate in the answer itself. This would also serve to pinpoint what might be a critical issue in the workflow, allowing someone to identify a problem even if the solution is otherwise of no interest to him. –  lserni Jun 17 at 23:44
@lserni Was it useful for someone? That's a myth. I agree with you, the OP should include it in his answer to help clarify things. –  Lazy Ninja Jun 18 at 8:49

For this particular case, I would just leave a comment, saying "This step isn't needed". It all depends on the answer itself, but in the general case, editing someone else's answer with the intention other than fixing typos/broken links/formatting is a bad idea.


Sure. Either ask first or do all your homework.

To everyone else: Wow. Really? You'd all rather answers get stale on SO? I've had my answers edited by other users in the past and I found it flattering that they would be so selfless. Granted, it's polite when they ask me first in the comments, but usually no one bothers. They just make my answer better! In turn, when I edit answers, I go ham. Take that best answer and make it even better; make it clearer; make it friendly. No one has ever bashed me for improving an answer or otherwise making it more correct.

Ya'll are trippin'. Also, most of your answers are edited by someone else. lol

It depends! If you are adding a step the OP has missed out and thats necessary for your platform, an edit is appropriate saying "On Platform X Step Y was necessary here". But deleting information from an answer is something you should only do with great care. Iserni covered it correctly - adding the information that a step MAY be superfluous is better then deleting it altogether. –  Angelo Fuchs Jun 18 at 8:25
Spot on, Angelo! –  Wray Bowling Jun 18 at 15:02

You must log in to answer this question.

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