Editing posts

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1

Yeah I know, this gets discussed each time a newbie realises that paying $14.95 still doesn’t let them edit their posts.

I understand that the primary reason for not allowing editing of posts is that it opens the door for dishonest editing particularly in GD. I also understand that preview is your friend, typos are cool, and that no one really cares if your post ends up a bit messy by mistake. However, in the spirit of trying to provide all things to all people, I have been thinking of ways to make editing practical.

The idea of allowing editing with a time limit has been suggested in the past and I think the main response to that has been that some threads just move so fast that any time limit will still be long enough for someone to post a reply, then the original poster to edit their post, thereby causing disruptions in the fabric of space-time.

What about this idea though. You have a time limit, but it is a variable time limit, and it is defined as however long it takes for someone to submit a subsequent post to yours. So, for as long as your post is the last in the thread, you may edit it. As soon as someone submits a subsequent post, all editing of your own post is frozen. Even if you had started making adjustments while yours was the last post, you won’t be able to save those changes if someone else makes a post in the meantime.

To me this would seem to be the best of both worlds.

Regards,

Ray

2

Sorry. No.

We understand all your points; unfortunately, we’ve been burned so thoroughly by the abuses people do that we’re not willing at this point to revisit the issue.

It is the minority affecting the innocent majority, but we got our hands full handling what we have now without opening the door for more work, especially more enforcement action.

TubaDiva

3

One problem with the time limit idea is that it’s hard to determine how it should work. The reason I"ve heard for not being able to edit posts is that if we could, then some jerks would spew out a nasty screed against someone to vent, and then go back and change it to something less incendiary. So there’d have to some kind of waiting period to prevent that sort of abuse, and to allow the person being pitted some opportunity to reply.

But then even if we were allowed to change older posts there’d still be problems. For instance:

Poster A. says something in a GD column
Poster B. decides to pit Poster A. based on that post, and others.
Poster A. goes back an changes the GD post.

Entire SDMB community ('cause we all read the Pit threads, right?) scratches collective head in bemusement.