Rejection of story-identification edit that adds references demonstrating the correctness of the answer

Question

I suggested an edit which was rejected. I would like some input on whether this sort of edit is desired, and what the recommended course of action would be from here on.

The edit: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/39997

(addendum: I am suddenly unsure whether the edit was rejected after all, I just checked it again and it now says "approved" as well as "rejected", apparently the votes are still coming in. Perhaps my question here was premature)

The original answer is a story-identification answer. The answer is very short, listing only story name and author, does not cite any sources, and in my opinion does not meet the quality standards of this site; but (and this is quite and important distinction in my mind) I have no doubt that it is the correct answer to the question.

All it is lacking is some more references that demonstrate why it is the correct answer.

The answer has been left undisturbed for 8 hours, and the author only has this single answer, so it seems unlikely that they will come back to edit it.

I have added the relevant quotes from the novel to demonstrate that this is indeed the novel that the questions was asking for.

I took care to only add direct quotes from the novel, and as little of my own commentary as possible, and I cannot really imagine this being against the intent of the original author.

Is the general consensus that such edits should not be made?

The edit is definitely too long for a comment. I suppose another possibility is to add this edit as yet another answer. I do not like this solution for the following reason.

• the first answer is the correct one. it seems disrespectful to copy that answer, only adding my quotes, when I alone would not have been able to identify the story.
• two answers that say essentially the same thing are confusing and unnecessary.
• adding another answer still leaves the site with a sub-standard answer. Editing the original leaves only a (IMHO) good answer

Answer 1

If you look again, you'll see that the edit was approved.

Approved 8 mins ago:
ash_k29 reviewed this 8 mins ago: Approve
jono reviewed this 40 mins ago: Approve
Shevliaskovic reviewed this 1 hour ago: Reject

It takes 2 votes to reject or approve it, so people vote until one of the two options receive two votes.

I was the one that rejected the edit because it was the original answerer that posted the link to the story, but it was you who added all the details. I feel like you deserve as much credit as the original answerer. You did a lot of work that he didn't.

The original answer was 10 words, but your edit was a fully legitimate answer.

Answer 2

I would have rejected this, had I been around. ^{I was gone for over 8 hours, though. I hope no one declared me as having abandoned the site.}

• Yes, all questions and answers are CC licensed. You are within your rights to edit the answer. However, the accepted policy is to not "substantially" (yes, a subjective term) edit other people's posts. You added 2109 characters to a post that was 164. That's over 1200%. I don't judge the edits based solely on character count, but it is indicative of just how substantial of an edit we're talking about.
• At first blush, your edits seem valid. To validate them and ensure that they were correct edits, I would have had to go check and do research. To me, that's too radical of a change.

To me, edits to answers or questions by other people should be restricted to things like spelling, grammar, formatting, and things like additions of links to sources/references that were already mentioned but not actually linked, or reasonably helpful images.

Answer 3

My opinion is that an edit that changes the answer substantively should be rejected. A good rule of thumb would be where where you've added or subtracted more than 50% of the original content.

In this case your edit amounts to extreme vandalism. Good vandalism, admittedly but vandalism nonetheless.

Additionally, your hard work should be rewarded. In this case you've put a lot of effort into locating quotes to back up the answer. Other users would no doubt wish to show their appreciation to you.