Question: Recently I received some **very** negative feedback after editing [a question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/64777/what-would-happen-if-a-bacterium-hijacked-human-gender-determination) (see comments and edit history). To me, parts of the question were unstructured, and needed clarification, but to the asker, they made sense.

I edited what I thought needed clarifying, and the OP told me my edits read terribly, made poor word choices, and were too hard for them to find a way to fix. I was told I did a sloppy job, and they said they were "really offended" by the changes I made.

I asked specifically what I did wrong, and while they did not reply, they have been active on the site since then. Clearly I did *something*, and I would like to avoid doing that something again, but I do not know what that is. For such an astoundingly negative response I expect a genuine reason for the OP to be upset, but it is not clear to me why.

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Is there a genuine reason to respond to an edit in such an overwhelmingly negative way; did I really do something "offensive" that is clear to others but not to me?

What should I do better if I am at fault so I don't receive such negative feedback in the future?

Answer: 
My two cents is that the original post was readable. Your edits were more readable, and didn't really alter the meaning of anything. So on sum, your edits were good. Except that, they weren't really needed in the first place.

So the question is: is it worth tweaking a decent question to make it read a little better?

My opinion is no. I try to only edit to either a. correct obvious grammar/spelling/capitalization or b. attempt to make an interesting but clearly close-worthy question (due to too broad, or unclear what you are asking) better enough that it doesn't get closed. If the post has problems but doesn't meet the above criteria, I prefer to nag them from the comments.

More philosophically, it is great when more people take ownership of Worldbuilding and attempt to make questions and answers better. But there is no 'right way' to do it. So its not that your edit was bad, but you just saw first-hand how needlessly editing a post, even if you are strictly editing in improvements, might conflict with the author's intent (somehow).
You asked:

> 
> What should I do better if I am at fault so I don't receive such negative feedback in the future?
> 
> 
> 

**Do better. Make fewer mistakes.**

First, only try to improve things where you are sure that you are making them better.

Second, try not to change an author's meaning. If you have trouble discerning the author's meaning, ask about it. Avoid editing based on a guess.

Third, carefully read your proposed edits. Check if you are creating any grammar errors while you "improve" someone else's post. If you break up a run-on sentence, pay attention to which subjects, verbs, and objects correspond to each other in the original sentence. Avoid accidentally creating new sentences that mis-match the subjects, verbs, and objects.

In this example, you added two grammar errors:

* You ended a sentence with "in a manner."
* There was a sentence that ended with "[not] caught early on." You changed the subject of this sentence from "a clerical error" to "data [that] will be published". This change significantly affected the meaning of the sentence.

Try not to put words in other people's mouths.

* In this example, you added the words "I assert".

Only add redundancy when necessary.

* In this example, you changed "had started" to "had initially started".

According to your profile:

> 
> I may be super disagreeable or argumentative but please don't take it personally!
>  I just like to support my answers, even if it sometimes means dragging everyone else's down verbally in the process.
> 
> 
> 

If you are "super disagreeable", expect people to "take it personally". Try not to be "super disagreeable".

Identify your mistakes. Be specific! (At least when talking to yourself.) Learn from your mistakes. Try to avoid making similar mistakes in the future.