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Recently, I saw a nicely formatted question and wanted to see how it was generated, meaning I want to see the "syntax".

But the Edit Button is Disabled and the popup text says "editing not allowed on non-wiki questions". I do not want to edit, I only want to see the formatting.

I feel this can be enhanced for usability: Make the edit button always enabled. When clicked on a non-wiki question, simply pop-up a comment "Edits can not be saved". If user had wanted to edit, he will say "cancel" and go away. If user wanted to see the syntax, he will say "ok continue" so now show him the text box with the raw syntax.

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Reset to default
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You don't need to edit to view the source.

For posts that have been edited already, you can just click on the Edited at ... link directly to get the revisions, then one more click to the source.

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    +1 for getting what I am talking about ! Also thanks for giving a good workaround ! I still think it would be easier (more usable & more intuitive) if the edit button gave a popup rather than we figuring out some arcane process (( or if the edit button popup gave your workaround "You cannot edit this. In case you want the source, try this . . . .", that would be better than current behaviour ))
    – Prem
    Jun 19, 2015 at 11:14
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    @Prem as far as I know, the only time the edit button is disabled is when there is a pending suggested edit. That is not very common so you should be able to see the source for the vast majority of posts. I don't think a popup would be worth the effort and overhead.The only other case I know are questions on meta and, again, those are far fewer than the ones on the main site.
    – terdon Mod
    Jun 20, 2015 at 12:07
  • @terdon , no problem , I will use the workaround by muru for those rare cases.
    – Prem
    Jun 20, 2015 at 13:09

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