What is editing?
We believe in the power of community editing. That means once you've generated enough reputation, we trust you to edit anything in the system without it going through peer review. Not just your posts—anyone's posts!
When should I edit posts?
Any time you see a post that needs improvement and are inclined to edit it, you are encouraged to do so.
Some common reasons to edit a post are:
- To fix grammatical or spelling mistakes
- To clarify the meaning of the post (without changing that meaning)
- To include additional information only found in comments, so that all of the information relevant to the post is contained in one place
- To correct minor mistakes or add updates as the post ages
- To add related resources or hyperlinks
Tiny, trivial edits are discouraged; try to make the post significantly better when you edit, correcting all problems that you observe.
How do I edit posts?
The Edit link is available under each post.
What happens when I edit a post?
The post will be updated to show the latest editor, as well as the original author. All edits are saved and tracked in a public revision history with attribution to each editor.
A post's revision history can be viewed by clicking the date and time at the bottom of the edited post (e.g. "edited 3 days ago").
Editing a question or answer also bumps the question to the top of the homepage. Please be mindful of this and make your edits count, so that the new attention is brought to something substantial.
Reviewing suggested edits
In addition, users with this privilege level can also begin reviewing suggested edits (made by users who have not earned this privilege yet). These edits remain in a pending state until they get enough votes to either (a) approve them and make the edits take effect or (b) reject them and discard the edit. Two votes in either direction will finalize the action.
Aside from reviewing suggested edits, users also gain access to the Low quality posts review queue. This queue contains posts which were deemed "low quality" by the system or other users. Users are charged with the task of editing these posts to improve their formatting and content, recommending deletion if they don't belong on this site, or marking them as acceptable posts.