What's the proper etiquette on editing people's updates to a question?

Question

A couple days ago, there was a question that received an update from the person who asked the original question, giving the answer that was given to them by the vet.

Part of the problem is that, with the update, they've asked a new question, adding on to/changing the original question.

They haven't returned in the past few days, so would it be proper for me to make an edit that:

1. Removes the new question in order to keep the original question intact.

2. Moves the update that was the answer they received from their vet, to an actual answer (maybe as a community wiki?).

Answer 1

Don't use community wiki to avoid credit or rep, that's not what it was designed to do. You can write an answer containing the information they provided, just give them credit for it by linking to the revision in the question where you took it out, in favor of moving it to an answer.

Something like:

In [link]this revision[/link], User added a lot of helpful information that is better suited as an answer instead of an update to the question. Here's what they had to say:

And that's fine. You deserve some rep for taking the trouble to put it all together, they deserve some credit and recognition for the research they shared, everybody wins.

Don't use community wiki for any other purpose than making a post edit-accessible to a broader group of users. Anything other than that starts to get into the sure-duct-tape-makes-a-great-shower-cap territory, and we're trying very hard to get away from that.