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Please consider this edit to "Don't heavier objects actually fall faster because they exert their own gravity?". (Compare versions 21 and 23).

Motivation for these (last two) edits: I realized that my explanation in the question was incomplete, and that when I talked about the acceleration being dependent on both objects, I was actually using an equation of the force to prove it. Since in acceleration, force is divided by mass, it seemed necessary to explain why the closing acceleration of the two objects still depended on both masses.

I'm asking this question since I'm not a super experienced user on Physics.SE and would appreciate any help to improve my formulas or reasoning.

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    $\begingroup$ I think the edits are a bit excessive, even if they do improve the question a bit. You generally don't want to change what a question is asking after answers have already come in. $\endgroup$
    – knzhou
    Commented Mar 23, 2017 at 19:13
  • $\begingroup$ @knzhou Considering the original question was radically and completely different (and about 3 times as long) and version 21 is already a heavily-revised version even after answers had started coming in, I feel like my edit is in the spirit of what I had originally intended to say, and that it is 100% in harmony with the given answers. $\endgroup$
    – ErikE
    Commented Mar 23, 2017 at 19:38
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    $\begingroup$ I think the important part of @knzhou's point (which I wholly agree with) is that 20+ edits to one post is way excessive. Take it as a lesson to be more conservative with your edits on other posts. And yes, it is also true that you should be cautious when editing a (non-closed) question after it's been answered, but as long as you don't change what the question is essentially asking and don't invalidate the answers, it's not such a big deal. $\endgroup$
    – David Z
    Commented Mar 23, 2017 at 23:48
  • $\begingroup$ @DavidZ I can agree with you folks that the quantity of edits is excessive. The question at first was badly written and I got a lot of heat for that. Eventually, we figured out a version of the question that was a good fit here and much shorter. If we could somehow erase the part of the history where I clumsily stumbled into the better answer, then we wouldn't be on edit # 23 right now. In any case, is rolling back at this point the right thing to do? Can we leave it given that my recent edit does explain much more clearly why both masses matter in the closing acceleration calculation? $\endgroup$
    – ErikE
    Commented Mar 23, 2017 at 23:50

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Personally I don't think that edit was necessary. It doesn't make the question any clearer for me, and more importantly I don't see how it would make it more clear to the readership of the site as a whole. But if it does significantly improve the question for a significant number of people, in some way that I'm not seeing, then that's okay.

I will also say (to echo my earlier comment) that to edit a post which already has many edits - "many" being more than 5 or so - you should be making a major improvement. I don't think this qualifies.

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  • $\begingroup$ I guess that's why I asked. To get a better sense of what's expected and looked for here. I apologize if I did not meet expectations! $\endgroup$
    – ErikE
    Commented Mar 24, 2017 at 1:18
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    $\begingroup$ No worries, it takes some experience to learn how we do things around here. $\endgroup$
    – David Z
    Commented Mar 24, 2017 at 2:44

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