Policy / etiquette of updating someone else's snippets

Is there an official policy or etiquette on updating someone else’s contributions?

For example, I have written improvements to some snippets. I post these on the forum on the support forum for the snippet, but the original author (for whatever reason) doesn’t update the download in the repository.

I’ve also recently tried to solve a problem with a downloaded snippet, found a solution, and then found the bug had been reported on the forums a year ago, yet the author had not updated the repository. To me it seems to defeat the point of open source/community efforts if the community make improvements or find bugs, but the authors do not update the snippet as available.

So, is it OK if I upload a fixed / improved snippet over the top of someone else’s snippet (obviously having given them time to do it themselves, and not taking any of their credit)??

Out of courtesy, contact the original author. However, we purposefully made the resource system up-datable by anyone. Sometimes life takes folks away for a while, and this makes it possible to keep resources up to date.

In other words, post away as a new release and don’t sweat it.