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I have experienced it a few times in editing a question, and I have just found an example.

https://english.stackexchange.com/posts/333008/revisions

As far as I understand, your edits, no matter how many times you edit within 5 minutes after your initial post or last edit, are supposed to be rolled into the previous revision, not appearing as a new revision history as the above link indicates. The above link shows only 3-minute interval.

Is my understanding incorrect? Have I missed something?

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    According to this FAQ, near the bottom, there are only 3 exceptions to the "grace period edit folding". The only one which seems potentially applicable to this case is "A comment has been added to the post since the previous revision by anyone other than the editor". Now, the only comment I currently see on that post came too late to trigger this exception, but maybe it's possible there was an earlier comment which did trigger it, and later was deleted? Possibly because the edit addressed the concern?
    – Dan Bron
    Jun 17, 2016 at 12:10
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    I commented with a suggestion for improving Eilia's answer. She then immediately improved the answer and thanked me in a comment. Then I removed my comment and they theirs.
    – NVZ Mod
    Jun 17, 2016 at 16:21
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    I have found the "time limit" to be quite variable. Anything under 3 minutes seems OK, but above that it's iffy at best. I suspect this has to do in part with the mechanics of timekeeping in Javascript.
    – Hot Licks
    Jun 18, 2016 at 3:03
  • @HotLicks: I doubt the grace period is implemented in JavaScript; rather, I'm pretty sure it's applied on the server-side when the edit is submitted.
    – ruakh
    Jun 20, 2016 at 4:28
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    @ruakh - I've seen claims made that you can bypass the grace period by hacking the script.
    – Hot Licks
    Jun 20, 2016 at 11:56
  • @Josh61 I am very disappointed at the responses. That's why. I'm on your side if you want to convert ELU to general reference and opinion-based Q&A site, but as long as there are guidelines, I think it is the right thing to do to follow the guidelines. It's a shame that we are discussing the issue based on such a low-quality question. That's what I felt.
    – user140086
    Jun 25, 2016 at 17:15
  • @Josh61 I respect your opinion and undeleted the question.
    – user140086
    Jun 25, 2016 at 17:31

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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I thought about deleting the question, but decided to leave the link with brief summary as it could be useful for current and future users.

@DanBron's comment has the answer. According to How does editing work?,

If a comment has been added to the post since the previous revision by anyone other than the editor, the five-minute grace period for editing will not be applied and the edit made after the comment will be shown as a separate revision history (even if it was made within the five-minute grace peirod).

I think two comments were added to the answer before the two edits were made (and later deleted). That's why the link shows the two revision histories even though the intervals are less than five minutes.

I started to find a duplicate in Meta Stack Exchange and found a question related with five-minute grace period in editing a question.

Reset question grace period once an answer has been posted.

According to Shog9's answer:

Edits will be rolled into the previous revision if the previous revision was created by the same author and none of the following conditions are present:

  • The previous revision was created 5 minutes or more in the past

  • A comment has been added to the post since the previous revision by anyone other than the editor.

  • An answer has been added to the post since the previous revision

  • The previous revision was a rollback

  • The new revision is a rollback

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  • It's a good question to keep around, I didn't know these exceptions. Maybe you could make the question more general, like under what circumstances will edits not be combined together?
    – curiousdannii
    Jun 19, 2016 at 1:08
  • Apart from the pure technical aspect, but how can one or two minutes difference impact (if it does at all) the quality of questions or answers that is at the heart of ELU?
    – user66974
    Jun 19, 2016 at 5:23
  • @curiousdannii Your edit is always welcome.
    – user140086
    Jun 19, 2016 at 5:29
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    This is indeed what happened. The comments which caused the observed phenomenon have been removed (but mods can still see them, and there's a comprehensive timeline as well).
    – Andrew Leach Mod
    Jun 20, 2016 at 13:57

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