Feedback from me after 24 hours.

About This Message Board
1

Hello,

I registered at this board approx 24 hours ago and I know that is not much time to be offering feedback. But I have a considerable amount of experience with boards that are similar to this one over many years and I hope you will take that into account.

The one overwhelming piece of feedback I’d like to offer concerns the ability to edit posts.

Some forums allow memebers to edit posts for a few minutes after they make them with no trace that the post was ever edited. I guess the thinking is that people often make small errors when first making a post - even if they have the ability to Preview the Post (which is a great feature).

Some forums do not allow any editing whatsoever and some allow editing only for a limited time period. I’m guessing that you allow people to edit posts for about ten minutes before they are prevented from making any future changes. At least that is what I seem to recall about my posts. Also, you choose to show that a post has been edited - even if it was done just a few seconds after posting, which is only fair. But I’d still like to have more flexibility in editing my original posts.

My main feedback is that I find editing posts - even those that were posted long ago is a very excellent feature. I understand there are pros and cons to allowing people to edit their posts after a lengthy time period. Heck! As a matter of fact, I bet you know all the pros and cons.

But, I would ask you to consider allowing people to edit their posts no matter how long ago they were made. I have joined several boards and one of them allows this. I have never found any serious problems that stem from this and I think there are many real good benefits.

First of all, if I learn about an error several days or even weeks after making a post, it is very useful to make changes to that post so that people who come back to the post can get the correct info. This is particularly important for technical kinds of threads where the correct info can make a very big difference - for example - threads related to a PC - where it’s important to specify instructions correctly.

There is a problem with adding a new post several days or weeks later. If the thread is active, one post may appear many pages (before or after) the original post and it becomes very difficult to tie the two posts to gether.

I realize that you don’t control the coding of the board (but maybe some of you are proficient and could make small changes to the code?). Would it be possible for you to make a change so that members could specify whether they wanted to be able to edit posts for an unlimited amount of time after first making the post? In that way people would be able to identify member who chose to be able to make edits to their posts long after a post is first made. I would love to be able to do that and it’s not just for technical types of posts. During a discussion, it’s really great to be able to re-visit a thread and add to a discussion - to make it more complete.

Anyway, sorry I wrote this post “on the fly”, but it sure would be excellent to be able to edit my posts long after they were first made. I believe the current time limit is close to ten minutes and I would love to see that extended by a large amount.

Any chance?

2

Welcome to the Boards.

The reason we don’t allow editing past the five-minute window (which was added a couple of years ago, originally there was no editing at all) is that we want people to stand by their words. There is a lot of lively conversation on these boards, including debates and arguments, and we don’t want to allow people a way of changing or distorting something they said previously.

For minor errors, we recommend that you use the “preview post” option to check your coding and do a final read-through before you hit “submit.”

For major errors, you can go back later, quote your own post, and highlight the change you want to make. If it’s an error of fact, a post acknowledging the mistake and offering the correct information is of course most welcome.

Moderators do have the ability to edit anyone’s post at any time, but we use that ability very, very sparingly, mostly to correct coding, add spoiler boxes, or to fix a typo in a thread title.

Hope this helps.

twickster, moderator

3

Why not just quote the original post with the correction?

My opinion is that five minutes to edit (or whatever it is) is great to catch typos and so forth, but allowing someone to go back and change something posted longer ago than that leaves itself open to abuse.

Welcome to the boards, btw.

Regards,
Shodan

4

Most people on this board don’t make a big thing about typos and minor errors – they will correct things, but will often deprecate their corrections by saying, “Nitpick …”. And if you come back an hour or a day later, and say, “Sorry, I meant X, not Y,” it’s not a big deal. Most of us are adults here: we know people make mistakes, and we don’t want to win arguments on stupid side issues.

So, I’m grateful that I can correct the stupid spelling mistakes that I see one second after I hit “Post Reply”, but I don’t think that it’s ever necessary to go back and revise history.

5

OK. Fair enough.

Thank you for taking the time to explain.

I’m sure that I can live with things the way they are.

6

I hope that you can: you sound like the sort of person who would fit in quite well here.

7

Both Something Awful and my board use the ninja edit feature and I must say I really miss it here. Even just a minute of ninja edit would be wonderful.

I also want a ninja smiley. And a sword.

8

I’ve seen message board threads where a later edit of the OP, without any malicious intent at all, managed to turn most of the thread incomprehensible. I can only imagine how bad it could be if someone did intend malice.

9

I belong to a board that not only allows edits at any time but even allows you to delete the entire post. You ought to try to make sense of a thread where the OP has deleted the original post! Not very nice. I am very glad that revising of the past is not permitted here.

10

Please do NOT give Giraffe a sword. You don’t even want to know what happened the last time we gave him something sharp and pointy.

11

I don’t think those baby chicks’ heads were attached right to begin with.

12

Clearly, “failure to withstand sword smite” constitutes a factory defect in baby chicks.

13

I have participated on a board with similar debating of contentious topics that allowed editing without limits, and I have seen it abused including deleting bad arguments to avoid admitting making them, deleting whole posts, etc.

Preview is your friend. Use preview. After that, a followup post acknowledging something wrong and posting the correction will be clear for most people. If it is something significant, e.g. your computer technical post, you could request a Mod to insert a note in the OP that there is a later correction. That would not change any content, discussion, reference to the error, but alert someone popping in that the first post isn’t the final answer. YMMV.

14

You might want to get one of those nice chrome plated ones. Raw steel is going to leave a nasty taste in your mouth not to mention that 20 foot esophagus.

15

I like the suggestion of quoting your original post and modifying it that way.
That way, you can explain why and what you are changing which can be interesting in and of itself.

Personally, I like the way this place is run, but I have been many many other places where it truly sucked so maybe I am just a refugee. :wink:

16

Every board that I post to that allows unlimited editing (including deleting posts) has posters that are “adults” and don’t edit posts that way to begin with. However, I will admit that none of those boards are general discussion boards, so that may make a difference.

17

I’ve seen that too - people falling over each other to either accuse someone of misquoting, or explain that it was a true quote, with the original having been edited.

18

I appreciate how edits are handled here since I’ve seen instances where abuses occurred when it was handled differently.

On one forum, they allowed unlimited edits. A girl that had been posting there for almost a year decided she wanted all her posts to disappear, so she deleted all of them. Since many of her posts were thread starters, the entire thread became useless. Since there were so many blank posts and blank OPs, the staff decided to leave them. That made a whole slew of threads nonsensical. Since this was on a forum that gave resources and advice, the posts after them were pretty useless since you didn’t know why people were offering those particular resources.

On another forum where people are allowed edits with a limited window where the edit comment doesn’t show, I’ve seen people make really contradictory remarks or really nasty remarks, then edit them. Since some people already saw their remarks and some even responded to them without quoting, they were allowed to voice their insult but not acknowledge it. If people are allowed to see a post, I think it’s great that people have to take responsibility for at least having edited it so people know there was a possibility of that.

Both of those kinds of abuses, and some that I can imagine but haven’t seen, can’t happen here because of how the edits are handled here. I like how that works here.

19

One thing I’ve seen on another forum, if you edit your post before someone else reads it, then there is no message to show it’s been edited.

20

Or rather:
“As God is my witness, I thought…”