# What is the proper procedure to handle a minor question edit mistake?

I recently saw where another person mistakenly edited a question so that instead of asking about modulo values of $$-1$$, it was now for $$1$$. This mismatched the title & the rest of the text, so it was fairly obvious. I wasn't sure if I should do a rollback, which would remove other useful parts of the change (as well as I'm not sure what other consequences a rollback would cause), so I instead just edited it myself to fix this.

My question is if I did the right thing and what is the best procedure for handling an issue like this? Although I suspect something like this would have been asked & answered before, I couldn't find anything. However, if it has been done before, please mark this as duplicate and point me to any such other questions. Thanks.

• Sounds like the right thing to do in that situation, although it might be beneficial to contact the asker to confirm that you are right in your theory. Mar 1, 2019 at 19:40
• @Anadactothe Thank you for your feedback. In this case, everything was consistent with the original text so it's very clear it was just a simple edit mistake. However, I believe that even if there was a potential typo by the OP, we still should try to avoid assuming this & just ask the OP instead of changing the text unless it is very obvious. Nonetheless, in other cases where it's not clear, I agree it makes sense for me to confirm my theory with the OP. Mar 1, 2019 at 20:10

The way you proceeded was good. The main goal is that the current version is best possible.

You could leave a remark in the edit summary, something like "fixed typo introduced in preceding revision." This might help to avoid confusions down the road. As you point out yourself in a comment, if the original version has two different questions it's more tricky. In that case to ask for clarification is often better.

It is also possible to comment-notify the editor, even though there is no auto-complete proposal for them. In general, I'd just fix the issue though and move on.

• Thanks for your answer. Although the edit is fairly simple & relatively obvious, I did try to make sure this was clear with my edit summary stating "Fix mistake made by previous editor in making changes of having congruence to 1 instead of intended -1." As for using "comment-notify the editor", I don't think it's necessary in this case as it was just a fairly simple mistake, that any of us can make occasionally if we're not careful. However, I will keep this in mind if I believe a future instance justifies using it. Mar 1, 2019 at 20:17