Advice for reviewing edits

Question

I just became eligible to approve pending edits and would like some advice. At the time of writing, this post has a pending edit:

Finding similarities between images

The edit changes the code posted in an answer - in a cooperative way, I'm not implying any bad intentions. But is this the best way to proceed? Should the editor have posted a comment instead, suggesting an improvement? In this case what is my best response - to reject the edit or to skip it (leave it for someone else to deal with)?

Answer 1

First, if you're unsure, you should skip it, that's exactly what the button is for.

For this specific edit, my personal opinion is that it should be rejected. I think edits on CR answers are useful when they are relatively small, unambiguous improvements, not rewriting a significant part of the code in the answer. I think posting a separate answer would be better for that.

Answer 2

To my mind, the biggest problem is comment like this:

// Pi> Just noting that I edited this line too.

You can edit someone's answer to improve it, but it should feel like a cohesive answer. If you've got parts written and explicitly marked as from a secondary source that's a good sign it shouldn't have been edited in.