Not every OP every time, rather something the OP has to choose before submitting and where some indicator exists to alert everyone that feature is enabled.
Why? There are a couple of use-cases that come to mind:
A game thread, where status and scores can updated in one place everyone knows where to look, or where multi-phase details can be revealed in a known location (on a different board I participated in a digital scavenger hunt where the list was revealed in three phases)
A tally thread - a bit different from a poll thread in that the “votes” result from discussion/participation and where “votes” can be changed and one can submit multiple votes (an lame but illustrative example is this thread where the first update was post 12)
A great debate thread where the pulse of opinion can be taken from time to time to see how many debaters are convinced of one side or the other, updated as killer points are made.
I started a thread on a board that uses that version, asking people what upgrades they would like to see for the smartphone the board is dedicated to. I was able to keep a running tally of all the upgrades requested in the first post, which saved posters from having to plough through the multi-paged thread to see if their suggestion had already been mentioned.
I appreciate if that can’t be done in v3.7.3, but it might be a reason to think of upgrading?
Out of curiosity, and because I’m thinking of migrating my own forums from phpBB to vB, I set up a vBulletin 4.04 demo from their site. In the Admin CP, I couldn’t see any settings basically letting only the OP edit the first post. The only time-limit editing setting I could find was for all posters.
That probably means that the board you post on, NineToTheSky, is probably using a hack to that effect. That decreases the chance of us implementing it, even if we upgrade.
There’s also the possibility that allowing perpetual edit of a starting post in a thread ultimately makes all the other replies in the thread useless/nonsensical. That’s not really what we’re about here.
Which is why I suggested if an OP activates this feature that there be some flag indicating it is in effect.
Having said that, the use of a feature like this is admittedly narrow and nothing more than a “nice to have.” If it takes any level of sweat inducing effort to implement it’s not worth it.
If ever, though, a future upgrade makes it easy, please consider implementing it. It can be put to good use on a board like this.
Just a second thought about this. I’m a fairly active member of that board, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen this abused. That’s not to say, of course, that it can’t be; and I appreciate the risk for the SD would be too high. But on a board that doesn’t have anywhere near the purported standards or number of rules that we have here, that’s reassuring.
Irrespective of any technical issues (already discussed above), allowing an OP unlimited edit access to the post that starts a thread is unfair. Such an option would make time travel and upset thread dynamics down the line. You cannot unring a bell and this is one area where technically it might be possible, ethically and legally it is not a path to walk.
Man, I sure can pick a crappy thread title. What I meant was an option to allow such editing at all times during that thread only. The standard edit window applies for all threads at all times, unless the OP makes a conscious choice for a particular thread - and everyone can see that option is in effect.
The only reason for preselecting such a feature is to use it for purposes similar to the foregoing. If someone starts, say, a standard Great Debate thread and posits only their position in the OP with this feature turned on, that will (at the very least) signal a serious credibility issue for that OP any ensuing debate.