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I was hoping to get some clarification to help me going forward with future edits.

Here is a screenshot of my proposed changes (link the original post here):

enter image description here

These are minor grammatical/capitalisation corrections to help the reader be able to read it more clearly. The 'Suggested Edits' article says common reasons to approve edits: "Improves grammar, spelling or formatting of the post or other minor mistakes."

This request was rejected by one person, approved by another, and then rejected again by somebody else:

enter image description here

I have had nearly all of my edit requests approved since I have began editing posts here (always for clarity/capitalisation errors/grammar), however I have had three edits in a row all rejected by Ramhound, and these all follow a similar pattern to the above.

Please could you clarify where I might be going wrong here? Thank you in advance.

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    Suggested edits require 3 votes for final approval. In your case it was not denied, approved and then denied again, it was voted on and two users decided it was insufficient while another thought it was sufficient. It is a democratic vote, not three separate actions with one overriding each other. Ramhound may have voted, possibly believing your edits to be too minor or trivial, but his was not a binding rejection of your suggested edit and is not to blame overall.
    – Mokubai Mod
    Commented Dec 13, 2021 at 12:46
  • “I have had three edits in a row all rejected by Ramhound” - I did no such thing. It takes more than a single user to reject an edit proposal to a contribution. It’s also unfair to single me out as the only user who declined your edit. Your edit was declined because the edits are trivial, and will likely have no impact, if the question is answered.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Dec 13, 2021 at 13:07
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    That's my bad for not understanding that it required 3 votes, so please accept my apologies for that. I saw that your name was the most recent so (wrongly) assumed that was the case. The purpose of my edits in these cases was to make it easier to read, should somebody stumble upon the post from Google. But I understand your point, thanks for clarifying.
    – Oast
    Commented Dec 13, 2021 at 13:09
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    @Ramhound I very much disagree. The guidelines say that fixing spelling and grammar are a legitimate edit for a reason. Part of making a good Q&A site good (and not like Quora or Yahoo Answers) is that the questions and answers need to look professional. To not fix those things suggests a lack of expertise. However, it doesn't make sense to force the Asker to fix it, as they may not speak English natively, so it's good when others fix it instead. So we should let other users fix these things. Better quality Questions get more upvotes which results in more people seeing and Answering them.
    – trlkly
    Commented Dec 27, 2021 at 3:00
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    To be clear, I actively will not upvote a Question or Answer with the blatant errors above. And, the couple of times I've tried to fix such issues and gotten a refusal, I've downvoted them. This was because the author themselves rejected such fixes, and thus (IMO) were actively harming the site by insisting on keeping the quality down. Questions and Answers are supposed to be edited until they are in the best possible shape for future readers. Such fixes are the vast majority of edits that I've actually seen.
    – trlkly
    Commented Dec 27, 2021 at 3:08
  • @trlkly - in my option and the entire reason for my vote to reject the edit proposal, is that edit would not have resulted in the question being reopened and ultimately answered, which is sole the reason I rejected it. It does not really matter, the entire reason the question was deleted (which would have have happen even if it was approved), is because the user was ultimately deleted.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Dec 27, 2021 at 5:14

1 Answer 1

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Disregarding the discussion on the merit of this specific suggested edit, this is how suggested edits actually work.

As per the help center for "edit questions and answers" privilege,

Reviewing suggested edits

In addition, users with this privilege level can also begin reviewing suggested edits (which previously you would have had to suggest). These edits remain in a pending state until they get enough votes to either approve them and make the edits take effect or reject them and discard the edit. Two votes in either direction will finalize the action.

(Emphasis added)

This means that in the usual cases*, 2 "approve" votes or 2 "reject" votes are always needed.

In this specific case, the first vote was "reject" and the second vote was "approve". This needs the third and final vote to reach the conclusion of either "approve" or "reject", and in this case, it was "reject", so the whole edit was discarded instead.

*There are other cases, such as when a reviewer chooses to "improve edit" (i.e. approve and edit further) or "reject and edit" that will trump over current votes. Also, another one when the OP overrides the conclusion after the review has been done.

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