Maya uses construction history to (try) to keep some sort of editable options open on previous commands and actions done on meshes (or nodes). It works by inserting a history node into the scene graph, in the case of a polygon cylinder this node will be called something like 'polyCylinder' and has the attributes you're…
you have to switch the tabs at the top of it over to the polyCylinder#. And construction history would be the list that forms in the INPUTS (bevel, extrude, ect) as you do work to it