Edit Restriction ??

[fan_de_LoK]

I notice an issue on the forum and I would like to know if it's a will of the webmaster or just a temporary bug :

I wanted to edit a post I created yesterday evening but I couldn't.
The post is 13 hours old and it's the last message of the topic, but it has no "edit" button into it.




If I create now a new post, it has the "edit" button present, so the "edit" feature is not disabled for the whole forum, it's present in some conditions.

I tested with different web brower, Firefox and IE, purging cache and cookies, and using different providers from home and from work : it changes nothing to the issue, the "edit" button is no more available in my previous messages even created yesterday, it appears only on new posts and I imagine only for a limited period of time.


Is this issue shared by other people or am I the only one ?

[viabuona]

There is an Edit-Restriction of 3 hours. After this time it's no more possible to edit or delete the post.
But this is not a new mode, it's overtaken from the old installation. It was configured some months ago for some - hmm, let me say 'duty of proof'.
Not really something I'm like but learned by experience.

[fan_de_LoK]

Well, my feeling is that this edit-restriction of 3 hours has to be removed.

I feel like being in a jail to not be authorized to edit my own post when I re-read myself and see that I have to correct / complete / change something

[chris17]

I agree with FDL. Doesn't the forum still tell you that the post was edited (and what time it was edited at), so you would still know if someone had changed it? I've never been on a forum with this kind of restriction, and I can't understand why it's a good idea. I would think it would just reduce how much people want to post in the first place.

[TullyBascombe]

I agree. Sometimes I make typing mistakes that I don't notice until later. It's allergy season and sometimes my eyes get a little blurry. It nags at me that I can't correct them.

[Yorkie]

Was there another thread about this somewhere? I thought I had made a post on this subject yesterday in which I also asked for the restriction to be relaxed.
Add another vote in favour of Patrick's request.

[john45]

What is the point of this restriction? What is "duty of proof"?
A very bad idea in my not so humble opinion.

[TullyBascombe]

In every forum I've ever used the "edit" function is available only to the user who created the post and the administrators. In order for anyone else to edit a user's post they would have to hack either the user's or an adminstrators account. I have heard of such instances, I've never heard of anyone getting away with it. The person who does it generally gets permanently banned.

[viabuona]

Most of the forums which I'm using don't even allow you to edit your post at all. And not only this, quite a lot do not allow you to post directly, each post has first been approved by a moderator.

I don't see any reason why a post, which needs to be updated days or weeks later, cannot simply added as reply/quote to the existing thread with the subject line like "Update" or "Correction" or "Apology". It would then be visible as new post and also clearify the reason for editing it.

Why defining a time limit for editing posts?

• We had a few spammers signing up, leaving some comments and then a few weeks later they came and edited the comment to something spammy. These is very hard to notice because edits are not flagged as new posts on the index.
• There was also some problems with users that posted in the forum and then after people have replied to the original postings they edited their original post. One of these people even removed all of the text in the own posts on the forum and confused so the whole timeline and senses of some threads.
• 3 hours is plenty of time to reread your post and make sure you are expressing what you really are meaning. And anyway, when you edit your post how should then be handled the quotes in the replies? They contains your 'original' post, shall they also be edited by the different posters?
• If a forum post who needs to be snipped is picked up by a mod/ admin then after the mod/admin has edited that post, it is still possible for the poster to reedit it again. I realised this because I snipped out a link that looked spammy and a couple of hours later went back to that post and saw that the poster had edited it after me. Well, of course this is a express one way ticket to Ban-City but first you have to find it.
• Another example? There was a post with some text near to the adult borderline and so I made a PM with the request to change the text in a more 'youth-friendly version'. Have to say that the response I received was not really friendly and contained the message that what I'm saying is not true. I was shocked because I thought I adressed the wrong user and so I went back to take a look at the post. Surprise, surprise - it was the right user and the text was changed but, as they was no newer post, not marked as 'edited'.

I agree with fan_de_LoK that this edit restriction block his really appreciated work in the compilation thread. But as I told him we should find another solution for this, special with the focus that we have a professional software for the administration of songs,media and artists on the website.

[fan_de_LoK]

My opinion is that you restrict our liberty on our own texts and this is not acceptable to me.

The examples you said don't justify for me the fact that you punish a whole forum community due a a few spammers.
All forums where I go allows the edit function. If a forum as unpleasant rules then I hardly go to it.


Above the edit function you almost disabled without any notice, it's the method that annoys me the most.

When important things like this on is not discussed first with the members, it's sign that members don't count.
I really feel being treated like a child that have to follow the rules enacted by a self-declared master.

I don't agree with that. We are a community, you seems to have forgotten it.
I really question myself about continuing to come on LD, the more it goes the more I feel like being a negligible thing...

[chris17]

I agree with FDL again. This restricted edit function is much more problematic for me than spammers have ever been. You have some valid points, but I think there are much better ways to solve this than punish the entire community. Just to go through your examples:

First example - if no one notices it, it's not really a problem, and if someone notices it, then they can report it.
Second - most people can guess that something's been changed if the rest of the replies don't seem to match the original post. The original posters will likely have some idea what they were replying to, if it's necessary to find out what the post said.
Third - is 3 hours enough time? What if you were making a quick post before running out the door, and came back after working for 8 hours? What if you were making a lot of posts that day and didn't get back to all of them before the 3 hour limit? And so on. Most people don't sit for 3 hours and review all the posts they made.
Fourth - nothing to comment on that.
Fifth - you could copy-paste the offending post before you let them know about it. Also, although I can see how that instance would be annoying to you, if they do change the post to be non-offending then it doesn't really hurt the community at all.

I'm getting the feeling that this edit restriction makes life easier for you, and I understand because I know it can be a lot of work to manage a forum. But I think it's not a big deal if someone edits their post or if something slips past you. This forum is overall one of the nicest forums I've been on, in terms of how well people get along; I don't think it needs much micro-managing. In fact, since everyone so far seems to object to this edit restriction, I kind of think that leaving it in place will cause more problems for the members than the occasional annoying person or spammer. You could also think of finding some more moderators to keep an eye on things - I think there are a lot of good members on here, who would be willing to give you a hand.

Just as an example, this forum has 746 members; I'm an administrator on a forum (not Libera related) with 4372 members, and that's after we've pruned down the member list to remove inactive members. We've definitely had our fair share of drama in the last few years, much more than I've ever noticed on this forum. But we have never had problems with members editing their posts. If we tell them a member to edit an offensive post, we already know what it was we told them to change, so no problems happen there. We remove unacceptable posts, and if someone edited their post to make in unacceptable, we would remove that too.

[john45]

I agree with FDL again.

Me too. You are in danger of killing this forum altogether with this unilateral and ill conceived decision.

[TullyBascombe]

I think kill the forum is a bit over-reaction.

[john45]

I think kill the forum is a bit over-reaction.

Perhaps, but if so, it is simply one over-reaction leading to another.

[kay]

hi, I have no axe to grind either way over this, just wanted to ask how many want to edit their posts?