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I edited a question before anyone else but as I'm a new contributor to the community, I got this:

You do not have edit privileges. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

After a few minutes, I saw it was edited by someone else and my edit is rejected. When I checked, The user did the exactly same edit. It's the second time something like that happens to me.

What happened to my edit and why it was rejected?

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    $\begingroup$ What's your question? $\endgroup$
    – Rasmus
    Feb 24, 2012 at 10:09
  • $\begingroup$ This just means someone clicked "Improve" and not "Approve". $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Feb 24, 2012 at 10:12
  • $\begingroup$ @AsafKaragila: I believe Improve does give credit to the original edit-suggestion. $\endgroup$
    – Aryabhata
    Feb 24, 2012 at 10:17
  • $\begingroup$ @Aryabhata: No, they changed that recently. $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Feb 24, 2012 at 10:19
  • $\begingroup$ @AsafKaragila: I believe the edit gets Approved by the Community user. I tried searching meta.stackoverflow briefly, but could not find a thread which supports your statement. Can you please point me to it? Thanks. $\endgroup$
    – Aryabhata
    Feb 24, 2012 at 10:23
  • $\begingroup$ @Rasmus: I thought it was obvious enough, so I didn't put a sentence with a question mark at the end. $\endgroup$
    – Gigili
    Feb 24, 2012 at 10:41
  • $\begingroup$ @Aryabhata: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/83721/… $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Feb 24, 2012 at 10:53
  • $\begingroup$ @AsafKaragila: Thanks! $\endgroup$
    – Aryabhata
    Feb 24, 2012 at 11:03
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    $\begingroup$ Well darn. That was my doing, Gigili. I made a minor grammatical change and checked the box "suggested edit was helpful" figuring you'd get credit. Sorry to steal the edit! $\endgroup$
    – Alex Becker
    Feb 24, 2012 at 11:14
  • $\begingroup$ @AlexBecker: Oh reputation doesn't matter really, I was wondering why the system rejected my edit twice and it's edited by someone else while they were the same. $\endgroup$
    – Gigili
    Feb 24, 2012 at 13:17
  • $\begingroup$ @Asaf: either I haven't had enough caffeine today or that post you linked to is very unclear. I read it and still don't quite get what's going on. $\endgroup$
    – Willie Wong
    Feb 24, 2012 at 13:27
  • $\begingroup$ @Willie: Try alcohol instead of caffeine. $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Feb 24, 2012 at 13:29

2 Answers 2

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It seems like the edit was rejected by the Community User, which is an automated process.

So this is my guess as to what happened:

You suggested an edit which put your edit in the queue.

A different user came in, and made an edit while your suggestion was still in the queue. He was very likely unaware of your edit suggestion.

Since the question was edited, the Community user rejected your pending suggestion, as it pertains to an older version.

So there is no malice. It is just the way the system works.

Also, the edits were actually different. If you notice, the edit made by the user uses eqnarray, while you did not use that.

Another possibility is that the user clicked "Improve" and unchecked the suggested edit is helpful checkbox.

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  • $\begingroup$ If it's how system works, shouldn't they improve it? Because something like this is shown in my profile: "Editor Stats -Gigili had 28 edit suggestions approved, and 2 edit suggestions rejected." for the same reason. Thank you for your answer anyway. $\endgroup$
    – Gigili
    Feb 24, 2012 at 10:45
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    $\begingroup$ @Gigili: What improvement do you suggest? It seems quite reasonable to reject pending edits if there was a edit made in parallel. Having that checkbox is also reasonable. $\endgroup$
    – Aryabhata
    Feb 24, 2012 at 11:02
  • $\begingroup$ If there's no possible improvement in hand, shouldn't users have a look at pending edits before editing? $\endgroup$
    – Gigili
    Feb 24, 2012 at 11:09
  • $\begingroup$ @Gigili: I believe the system tries to cater to that by placing a number near the edit link, so if a user wants to edit, he/she knows that there is an edit pending. But it is always possible that two people click edit at the same time and the suggested edit is done faster, but not fast enough that the other user is notified. $\endgroup$
    – Aryabhata
    Feb 24, 2012 at 11:16
  • $\begingroup$ Makes sense. Thank you so much. $\endgroup$
    – Gigili
    Feb 24, 2012 at 13:14
  • $\begingroup$ @Gigili: Note that users with between 2000 and 5000 rep can edit posts themselves, but do not get to see unapproved suggestions. $\endgroup$
    – hmakholm left over Monica
    Feb 26, 2012 at 5:14
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A comment on the question's title: There is not, effectively, any "priority list" for suggested edits that could discriminate in favor of high-rep users.

Users with 10k rep get notifications at each page load when there are unhandled suggested edits. This means that suggested edits are usually acted upon quickly; there's no significant backlog building up. In my experience, it is quite rare that there is more than one suggested edit on the entire site. And it is exceedingly rare that there are two competing suggested edits on the same post.

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