Ah yes, dear Edit mode. My pet peeve in SharePoint.
There are 3 default permission groups in SharePoint – members, owners and visitors. Up to SharePoint 2010, the members group used to have Contribute as a permission level. Then when SharePoint 2013 came around, the default was changed to Edit and has been that way ever since.
It doesn’t sound like a big deal till you read the item level permission. Site Members will be allowed to make structural changes. That is the roll of the Site Owner, not the Site Member. Members are only supposed to be allowed to upload, edit and delete ITEMS, not the actual lists. See case in point here.
Here is the offending setting.
I can only assume Microsoft did this to cater for the Microsoft 365 Group connected sites, so that the users in the members group can access the other application associated to the group. However, it puts the SharePoint content at risk.
So I just change it. I untick the setting, change the name to Edit Safe and fix the description.
Now they can still work in the other platforms, but my SharePoint governance and architecture is secured.
You only need to do this on group connected sites because the ability to change it from the ribbon is greyed out.
Stand-alone SharePoint sites allow you to edit the members group from the ribbon. You can just change it back to Contribute from there.
WARNING
This is the top of the foodchain in the SharePoint permissions model. Don’t randomly click settings on and off unless you know what they do. What you change in here changes the entire site collection.
