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Recently had an edit rejected... https://math.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/923003

There was a typo in the original "2-cycles" should have been "3-cycles" which is a fairly big mistake given the subject of the question/answer and threw me off to begin with.

I edited it but was told to add more edited characters. So I also added a link to the wiki page that provided more information about Parity of Permutations.

However, it was rejected as "does not make the answer more accurate"... which it does.

And "does not improved readability" ... which it does.

If there was no 6 character limit on the edit it would have been approved and would have made the answer more correct.

It seems like I happened to get two people on bad days rejecting it because their comments make no sense to me. Maybe I could've ordered the last sentence better (or not added it at all) but initially I had no intention of adding it and only added it to get around the 6 character limit.

Surely, asking for updates would have been a much better and more useful response than a rejection that seems to have taken no thought about it into consideration?

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    $\begingroup$ You have enough reputation to post a Comment for the OP, suggesting the $3$-cycle change to replace $2$-cycle. While it may have been highly likely in your estimation that this is what the OP meant, surely a change in meaning (even if one character) is worth having the OP's blessing? So in the future perhaps these one character fixes should be proposed as Comments, rather than made as unilateral edits. $\endgroup$
    – hardmath
    Commented Dec 13, 2017 at 15:16

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I think the rejection is fairly clear.

And you see what the problem is: the last sentence you added simply isn't appropriate as part of the answer. You've fallen into the trap of dismissing the problem because it's not the part you actually care about.

It might make sense as a comment, but I don't think it's really appropriate either. It's a chatty sort of remark and doesn't add anything to the post. (stackexchange is about questions and answers, not about conversation!)

Both of the rejections were surely in regard to that added sentence. Note that they are both canned responses — they come from a list of options a reviewer can choose when they reject the edit.

I would not be surprised if the reviewers completely missed the actual edit you cared about since it's so small; still it would have been inappropriate to approve the edit with its problems.

There isn't a "resubmit the edit to the original editor for improvements" option here, or similar; having the edit rejected is really the only way it was likely to go in its original form. The site simply doesn't have a "solicit the original editor for improvements to their edit" option. And I'm not even sure that would be a worthwhile feature; after all, the editor can edit again after receiving feedback, as you have.

The only other reasonable1 possibility would be if the reviewers happened to spot and appreciate the importance the relevant edit that was bundled in with a rather common sort of inappropriate edit; under those circumstances the reviewers would be capable of editing your edit so that it included only the relevant bit.

1: The most likely of the unreasonable outcomes were to get the edit rubber-stamped by people who don't really pay attention to the content

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Your edit, among other things, added the sentence

I didn't fully understand the difference between an odd and even permutation so used this site to learn about them.

That is, you made it seem like the one who posted the answer was lacking in understanding. I would have rejected your edit for this reason alone. (I would have accepted your edit if this sentence was not included.)

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