What to do when an edit suggested to you is wrong but not completely?

Question

In this question ¿Cuáles son las distinciones más importantes del castellano amazónico del Perú?

I posted an answer and RCramiro suggested an Edit. I didn't accept it, but i guess they get accepted after a while.

His changes were correct for the most part, but there were some that were quite incorrect. He changed the case of some words that I put to emphasized my answer, which it is not big deal.

But he replaced:

• comunmente with => comónmente (I think this was a typo)

• variar with => varear (This is the most important because the words are completely different, and to put varear where he did makes no sense) So I was saying that the "use of words may change depending on the group of people" And they put something like "the use of words may be beaten up with a stick depending on the group of people"

I didn't know what was the best to do in this case. Should I have rejected the edit and then add the parts of his edit that were correct? Or should I accept it and then edit over his edit? (well now I will have to do that since it got auto-accepted)

I created this question mostly, because I think the user that edited my question is learning spanish, so I think it would be nice if somehow I could make him see that the word "variar" is different than "varear", and what I wrote was correct.

What is the etiquette in these cases?

Answer 1

You have three main options, with only minor differences.

1. When reviewing edits, there should be an option to "improve". You can click this, then edit the other user's edit to be more correct before approving it. This still shows the other user as the editor in the post history.

2. You can accept the edit as-is, then do your own edit to correct the mistakes. This will show the other user as editor, followed by you as an editor.

3. You can reject their edit, then do your own edit which includes their proper corrections. This will only show you as an editor.

I tend to prefer #1 or #2, because I like to give credit where credit is due. HOWEVER, note that every time a user edits a post, it gets it closer to CommunityWiki status (I think that happens after 6 unique users edit the same post, but I'm not sure that's current information).

In most cases, the CommunityWiki thing won't matter in the least, but it is one difference between the various methods.