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Today I was about to edit a poorly-described question, and I noticed the edit link was disabled.

When exactly does the link get disabled and enabled again? I mean, for example:

  • from when someone clicks edit to he/she closes-edit-dialogue/submits-changes?
  • from when the edit evaluation starts by moderators to its approval/rejection?
  • 3
    When there's a pending edit you can't make any more edits before the first one is approved/rejected. I'm guessing this was the case here. – Keiwan Feb 26 '17 at 20:49
  • 1
    So you mean 2 guys can start to edit same post simultaneously? And edit button only gets disabled some edit is in approval/rejection queue , and not when someone just starts(clicks the edit link somewhere else) to edit? – Behrad Khodayar Feb 26 '17 at 20:54
  • 4
    Exactly. You can start editing a question but if someone else submits their edit before you, you won't be able to submit yours. Very rarely the system is too slow to catch up with the fact that someone else has already edited the question and then things like this might happen. – Keiwan Feb 26 '17 at 21:27
  • I think higher rep can override others. Sometimes I'll comment with [edit] just so I can get the link, then I'll edit myself. – cricket_007 Feb 26 '17 at 23:04
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    @cricket_007, If editing is disabled due to a pending edit which you have already reviewed, you can force-edit the current question with this bookmarklet: javascript:void(window.open(location.href.replace('questions','posts').replace(/([0-9]{4}[0-9]*)\/.*/,'$1/edit'))). The bookmarklet effectively strips the URL down to minimal and adds /edit. Doing this acts as if you had clicked "Improve Edit" in the Suggested Edits review queue. In other words, the pending edit is approved and you edit that version. The bookmarklet could be changed to edit answers too, should you desire. – Makyen Feb 27 '17 at 19:54
  • @Keiwan Except when you can review suggested edits, and have not reviewed the pending suggested edit yet. In that scenario, you can click the edit link and open up a review modal window to approve, reject, or edit the pending edit. Once you've voted and the window closes, the edit link will be greyed out unless you cast the final approval or rejection vote, or unless you chose to edit & approve while reviewing (in which case the pending edit and your edit would be applied, in respective order). – TylerH Feb 28 '17 at 15:20
  • @TylerH Yes, I know about that, but that's still the same as what I've written in my comments. The pending edit still has to be approved/rejected before another edit is applied. It's just that if you're over 2000 rep you can help with this process yourself. – Keiwan Feb 28 '17 at 15:38
  • @Makyen are you sure? I've done that in the past and it has always rejected the edit. Like this – user4639281 Feb 28 '17 at 17:05
  • @TinyGiant, You are correct. I stand corrected. You edit the changed version (as if you clicked "Improve Edit"), but the pending edit is rejected as an edit conflict, which does not report the same as "Reject and Edit". – Makyen Feb 28 '17 at 17:50
  • @Keiwan, You can force the edit (see above), without first explicitly approving or rejecting the pending edit. If you save, the pending edit is rejected as an edit conflict, as pointed out by Tiny Giant. I have not tested if this is possible with <2K rep. – Makyen Feb 28 '17 at 17:53
  • @Makyen Are you talking about the situation when someone submits their edit while you're also editing and your editing dialog is open? So you can save without even noticing that there was another edit? – Keiwan Feb 28 '17 at 18:21
  • @Keiwan, No, I am saying that you can choose to manually, or using non-stock links (see bookmarklet above), start a new edit while there is a pending edit by navigating to the edit page for the question/post. You can then submit that edit without having reviewed the pending edit. – Makyen Feb 28 '17 at 18:26
  • 1
    @Keiwan, You can also do this by navigating to the revisions page for the post and selecting to edit a specific version of the post using the stock links that are provided on that page. If there is only one revision of the answer/question, you would need to manually navigate to the revisions page for that post. For example, this question's revisions page. – Makyen Feb 28 '17 at 18:34
  • 1
    @Makyen Good, I also originally understood your comment this way. I'm just a little confused since I never said any of your explanations are wrong or that there is no way for someone with over 2k rep to "force" an edit while there is one pending. Whether it's by clicking "Improve edit", "Reject and Edit", using the bookmarklet or via the revisions page, the pending edit gets (either directly or indirectly) approved or rejected and then the new edit is applied. That was the point I was trying to make :) – Keiwan Feb 28 '17 at 18:45
  • @Keiwan, I read your comments as indicating that the pending edit must complete the review process prior to it being possible to submit a new edit. While the main "edit" link will not result in being able to edit the post, it is possible to submit an edit prior to the pending edit completing the review process. Submitting the new edit immediately ends the review process with the prior pending edit being rejected as an edit conflict. I have not tested to see if this is possible for users with <2K rep. Perhaps we are just miscommunicating due to semantics. – Makyen Feb 28 '17 at 18:57
25

Quoting the FAQ on Meta Stack Exchange:

There are a handful of conditions where we will stop accepting suggested edits:

  1. A large number of suggested edits by you were rejected in the past week (at least 5 more than one-third of your accepted edits).

  2. We are out of empty slots in the queue (200 on Stack Overflow. See here for details)

  3. You have 5 suggested edits pending.

  4. There is an edit to a particular post that was not approved yet.

  5. You are not logged in and the post is less than 10 minutes old.

  6. You are on a child meta.

  7. Your account is suspended.

  8. The post is locked.

In the past no "edit" link would be shown at all; since July 2012 the edit link is disabled and the mouse hover tooltip will explain why an edit cannot be suggested, like "Account is not allowed to suggest edits".

  • 2
    I also found the edit button to be disabled when I had too many outstanding pending edits. I think it was 5 that I had so until one of them was reviewed I couldn't edit anymore. Not sure if that's user specific. – Bugs Feb 27 '17 at 12:12
  • 1
    @Bugs that could be reason 2 in the list, but if anyone else can confirm that, we can add it to the list. – user247702 Feb 27 '17 at 12:21
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    I have just managed to replicate. I had 5 pending edits and wasn't allowed to do any more. There is a hover over message that also advises this so it's not ambiguous. – Bugs Feb 27 '17 at 13:12
  • 1
    @Bugs I found meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76251/… which confirms what you're seeing, looks like the two answers are out of sync. Thank you for the remark! I'll do some edits to the posts. – user247702 Feb 27 '17 at 13:33
  • 2
    @Stijn: no, #2 is a different limit. There is a global (per site) cap, and a per user cap. The latter is relatively new, see Rate limit suggested edits – Martijn Pieters Mar 1 '17 at 11:03
  • @MartijnPieters Right, I forgot about that one. I had even upvoted the request :) – user247702 Mar 1 '17 at 11:37

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