Correcting question grammar and spelling

Question

Is there a general feeling here about correcting a question's spelling and grammar?

We seem to get a lot of questions from obviously non-English speaking users and although the questions can be understood, sometimes they could do with a little tidying up.

My main fear is that language barrier means that the question is misunderstood and re-written to be a different question, but at the same time, even if the question is changed a little, the answer may help someone else in the future.

A good example would be this question. It's been put on hold as it's not clear what's being asked, but it seems to be about calf hypertrophy (at time of writing this, myself and one other user are in agreement of this).

Answer 1

It will vary case to case, but I think you've already outlined the best that we could do.

If the question is clear, understandable and specific (that last part being key), then go ahead and help clean up the question.

For the more ambiguous questions, it's safer to not make assumptions to create a new question without input from the person who asked the question. In this case, I would use comments to narrow down what the person is trying to ask. It may take a good amount of conversation, but we also have a chat that can be used for that.

Answer 2

I personally feel that, if there's only one slight misspelled word that would fit, go ahead and pick it. If the querent cares, they'll come back and change it. Otherwise, at least you get a chance to have an answerable question. The only risk is that you might get answers for the wrong question, but given the question wasn't answerable before...