<p>Some code formatting changes can appear to be purely stylistic in nature, and reviewers may well reject them for this.</p>

<p>Sometimes the improvement is obvious (for example if code hadn't been correctly put into a code block) and the edit is likely to go through, but changes in indentation generally look stylistic and we tend to leave purely stylistic decisions to the original author's discretion - hence a rejection is likely.</p>

<p>However, you can't expect that an edit to a piece of Python code will be read  by a Python expert. In fact, even though the most common language used on Cross Validated is R, several of our most regular reviewers are not R users - so in that case, I don't think there is a single language where it is safe to assume that code edits are going to be read by someone fluent in the language!</p>

<p>This is somewhere I think it would pay to be more assertive in your edit comment. I always read the suggested edit in conjunction with the comment. You put:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Comment: indent code so shows correctly</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The "correctly" is suggestive that the change is more than stylistic but I think you could have emphasised more the consequences of the code remaining in its current state. Note that some people hold strong views about indentation and style guidelines to the point at which they view other indentations as "incorrect", which isn't the kind of conflict that edit reviewers want to get involved in. I think you need to make it clearer that the displayed indentation was affecting the code's functionality, for example:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Comment: displayed indentation won't work in Python</p>
</blockquote>

<p>(I invite other people to edit this suggested comment, or propose alternatives, to make the point more clearly.)</p>
