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There is a pending edit suggestion for politics - Is Barack Obama a natural born US citizen? - Skeptics Stack Exchange.

The edit adds this definition:

Certificates of Non Citizen Nationality states:

The term “outlying possessions of the United States” is defined in Section 101(a)(29) of the INA as American Samoa and Swains Island. No other statutes define any other territories or any of the states as outlying possessions.

and says "Sec. 1401(e) does not apply to anybody born anywhere else.".

That is, a major part of this answer is completely wrong.

Simply tacking this addition on is confusing and doesn't make it obvious that it is an addition or that it contradicts most of the answer above.

Normally the correction would be a comment, and the OP would change the answer accordingly, but this is an old post and that's not going to happen.

But even if it were added on with an appropriate explanation, it still seems wrong.

And simply deleting the incorrect part of the question could be confusing.

How should such situations be handled?

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    There is already a comment making this complaint about the answer from a decade ago. Any edits to enforce using it as a correction are not appropriate. The answer author has chosen not to make that change - so downvote it as being inaccurate or erroneous if one believes it relevant, or write a new answer with better explanation. There is zero special case knowledge needed here.
    – Nij
    Commented Aug 2 at 1:22
  • I don't know enough about Obama's family to draw a conclusion, but Sec. 1401(c) or Sec. 1401(d) may apply, even if 1401(e) doesn't. Making an edit to correct that reference seems well within the spirit of edits - it doesn't undermine the OP's original argument, it just corrects a paragraph reference. Using an edit to reverse an answer's conclusion is probably too far though.
    – Oddthinking Mod
    Commented Aug 2 at 8:49

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This isn’t new information and it has already been addressed in a comment that is now a decade old and the answer is 13 years old. At this point the edit should be rejected as it clearly goes against the author’s intent if it invalidates their answer.

If you think more needs to be done you can write your own answer with the correct information.

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