I don't understand this paragraph...
I'm saying that I agree with you that directors work under constraints, so there are things that may be more obvious to those outside of those constraints. This includes viewers, critics, and even the filmmakers once they're done with the film. It's not a knock on them, nor a compliment to us, really. It just means that we have the advantages of time and hindsight, and lack the disadvantages of schedule and budget. It's not saying any of us could do better in total, under those constraints. It's saying some of us might have a better idea in one specific area, without any constraints.
Suggestions certainly
can be presumptuous, if they take the form of "Why didn't they just do X?!" rather than "I think, in retrospect, they should have done X." But so far it looks like most of the suggestions have appropriately taken the latter form.
I've never seen a critic say "I could have improved this film and here's how." Criticism does have an air of pomp to it, but I still think odd to retroactively change someone's work. The difference between this as criticism is critics judge the work as presented to them and this thread is about "I can do better." I don't know any critics who say "I can do better."
Not in those words, but lots of reviews contain suggestions about what could be done differently. I guess I can try to find examples, but I feel like this is pretty common.
Anyway, I think there's a pretty minor difference between "I would do this to make it better" and the more general "this should have been done better."
That said, I'm still in favor of fan edits and, yes, I know this is contradictory to my point, but no one read my first post in this thread...
I did see your post, but since you admitted it was a contradiction I didn't see the point in belaboring it. But I think the contradiction can be reconciled by drawing a distinction between suggesting changes after the fact, and pretending they were obvious, or that we could have done better under the same constraints.