When NextGrex makes its debut, with its new look and everything, maybe it should be time that Grex starts allowing users to edit their posts after they've been entered. I'm sure Backtalk has that functionality, if it were allowed. If you went to a hundred other boards, you will find the vast majority allow you to edit your posts. Not Grex. It becomes annoying because once you enter a post, you read it and a word is misspelled or a line is left out, and you can't edit it. You have to scribble the entire message and enter it again. I understand the reasoning that Grex needs to keep an accurate record of what has and has not been entered, for its own security. But if a post is edited, can't it be set up so at the same time, the original unedited post is automatically archived somewhere? The other reasoning for not allowing people to edit their posts that I can surmise, simply discouraging juvenile behaviour, is I think overstated. I see far too many boards out there that allow users to edit their posts, without having any real repercussions, to believe that this would really be a problem. I think if Grex wants to compete with all the other boards out there, and the current world of internet conferencing, that it needs to reconsider its longtime policy and start to allow its users to have the flexibility to edit their posts.34 responses total.
I'm ready to consider such a move. Mostly, I'm ready to make some changes to Grex that would make it a little more user friendly, and allowing people to correct their entries might be a step in that direction. What you may find happening is people will edit for more than typos, and what people say in response will then either not make sense or not be what they intended to say. Folks could get around this by simply quoting what they are referring to, before it could change, but that's clunky and hostile. So, I don't know how this would work for Grex. But I'd be willing to give it a six month trial. I'd be willing to give lots of ideas six months trials and let Grex experiment some.
On the other hand, one can currently scribble the entire post, and what people say in response will not make sense either. In fact, if allowing editing would help stop the practice of scribbling all your posts in an entire conference, I think it is a good change.
Here is an extreme example of what I'm getting at: In response #1 someone says, "Bush is an idiot." Someone comes in at #2 with, "I agree with you on Bush." The person who enters #1 comes back, a few days later, and changes his/her response to read, "Bush is a pedophile." Now, do all the people who have responded since #1 was edited get warned that response #1 was changed? If so, that would be good in the case of what happened here, but bad in that of all those other responses just getting spelling errors corrected would also get reported as changed responses. Will such a change result in folks not taking the chance of just agreeing or commenting straight-out, but rather first quoting the previous text? I find lots of quoting rather tedious. Tolerable, but tedious.
Quoting will also get us into a sticky thicket when folks feel they should have a right to have "all their words" deleted upon their request. Right now, quoting is pretty low key, and hasn't been a problem.
most other boards that I use have a quote function, whereas here all you can do is copy and paste someone's words if you want to reference their quote in your post. I actually think the having an actual quote function is less likely to cause controversy than excessive copy and pasting. The whole point is that grex needs its conferencing to be competitive functionally with all the other sites out there, otherwise that lack of functionality becomes a reason for people not to use it. Grex is trying to attract new participants, its survival seems predicated on enlarging the community. It doesn't need to be discouraging people from participating because of these self imposed software limitations.
Quoting works as long as it's limited to a sentence or maybe a paragraph. An automated quoting system should automatically remove quotes-of-quotes, lest the whole thing turn into USENET. I've found that editing posts works well for "reference items" intended to be a long-lived item about an ongoing topic. There are few such items here on Grex. In discussion items, things work differently. As a newcomer, if I try to follow an existing discussion in which some content has been changed or removed, I end up feeling alienated because I can't follow the discussion as it took place.
I think that if post-editing is allowed there should be a way to put a message into the post header- right now it tells you the time a person posted- if it gets edited perhaps that edit time came be listed next to the original post time?
#7 thats a good idea. question for jan or srw, I'm assuming you guys wrote backtalk with such functionality possible. Is there any reason these suggestions can't be implemented? This might also be a factor in the longterm decision of whether to use picospan or the other alternative(s)discussed on NextGrex. Which software is more adaptable to these changes?
I think the ideal approach would be to give the poster of an item the ability to determine at the time of posting whether the item will allow responders to edit their responses. If an item allows editing and the community wants to discuss it in a non-editable context, then someone can enter a new item as non-editable.
2 words: Forget It.
You're talking about the ID policy, right ?
#10 why?
I agree with albaugh; forget it. There's too many ways it can
go wrong, too many ways it can end up "played", and we're already working with
a bunch of people (or at least a few) who take GREAT JOY in harrassing staff,
BOARD, And the occasional innocent bystander or two. Why give them more tools
to use?
(in a historical sense, I've always HATED just how the congressional
Record ends up manipulated politics or not, after the fact. We AREN"T as
important as the congressional record, but it DOES mean something. THe words,
as written have meaning and value. Even as a comedy of errors, If somebody
sticks their footin their mouth they will learn something. So will the people
who follow the thread.)
Many places allow editing posts but only within about 30 minutes of posting. That's just for minor correction like fixing typos etc. That way changing the whle meaning of the thread can be somewhat minimized.
I don't mind editing posts before someone has replied to them. Or maybe also adding to the ends of them (marking it as an addition) within some time period (a day?).
Backtalk does have the ability to edit posts. Flicking a config switch enables it. I can't remember if it is possible yet to configure this on a per-conference basis. I know it isn't possible yet to configure it on a per item basis. Existing code records the last edit date, and with display a comment like (editted on Sun, Dec 19, 2004 (22:32)) next to an editted response. To the best of my recollection, there is no code in place to archive the original, uneditted response, though that would be easy to add. I've considered making it possible to allow people to edit their responses for X minutes after posting. Not sure it would be desirable. I like the time limit better than "before the next post". The latter is kind of a random time period. I would feel like the lottery - "I wanted to fix the typo, but mfp got in a response before I could fix it". With a time period, the program could tell you when you start the edit - "You have 90 seconds left in which to edit this resposne". Annoying, but predictable. I have no strong opinions either way on whether or not this should be enabled on Grex. It is enabled in many places, and doesn't seem to cause many problems. I'd consider it a problem if editing inspired a lot of quoting. For one thing, that would render editing useless - you could fix your original response, but not all the quoted copies. Fronttalk supports editting too, but I don't remember how well.
Maybe by default it could let you edit until someone posted, but if someone posted within, say, half an hour, it would still let you edit?!
I know that editing responses works on other systems. I don't think it would work here. I've seen responses editted to make subsequent responses nonsense or worse. It wasn't much of a problem because peer pressure worked. It would be done or twice for humour, but the humour would grow old quick. Here, I fear folks wouldn't get tired of the effect and so would so abuse the ability that serious discussion would evaporate.
We DO NOT want editing of posts, FULL STOP.
I like the "for x minutes". The times I want to edit are usually ah-ha moments right after I've posted that leave me going "arrrgggh".
My advice to you'all and myself is: proofread before submitting.
This all goes to the question again of who OWNS the post. If, as some here will strenuously argue, the person creating the post OWNS that post, then doesn't it follow that this person would also own the right to edit it? If a user is allowed to enter a post but not edit it, then grex is assuming ownership of the post from the time it is entered. If that is the case, grex should not be deleting posts or items at the request of users. Because those users don't own those posts. So which is it? Who owns their posts? I'd like to be able to edit my own words. If I own the intellectual property rights to my own words, I should be able to edit them. Editing also comes in handy if you were typing a post and remember something after entering it that would clarify what you typed, but if you put that in a new post, it might confuse people. I think Gelinas's fears are valid, but we'll never know how valid unless editing is allowed at least on an experimental basis. My guess is that grex simply isn't busy enough to have the kind of misuse of the editing function that he suggests, on any widespread basis. But hey,lets try it for a month or three and find out. I think its worth the experiment! Also the quoting function as well, which doesn't seem to be misused on other boards that I've seen.
You have the ability to edit a response right now. It's a two step process, you remove the response you don't like and enter it fresh, the way you want it. It works pretty well, actually. You don't even have to do this type of editing within a few minutes, hours or even days after your post. And it leaves behind a clear flag that you have removed the response. Responses others enter that comment on your post may not make any sense and longer but at least this type of editing can't be used to distort what others have said. I'm trying to be convinced the editing Richard wants would be a good thing for Grex. I'm not there yet.
Owning something doesn't give you free reign to do anything you want with it. Think "context" my son. You may own a car (but only if you're 18), but you can't drive it across people's lawns, and you can only drive it on public roads if it has registration and insurance and you have a driver's license. A BBS is not a dynamic store for your written words.
Good point. Though you can legally own a car if you are under 18. You just can't drive it.
You can drive it if you are over 16
You can drive it on your own property.
And in Mexico.
In the state of Michigan I do not believe you can own/purchase a car and be on the Sec. of State's "books" until/unless you are 18. But I/we digress...
Hmmm...I've known kids who had cars they were too young to drive legally. They were mostly the sort of cars that lived up on blocks getting constantly worked on. I don't actually know if they were the legal owners of these objects.
I know someone who at the age of 16 managed to have *his own* name as owner on the registration document to a motorcycle. (It may be that the Sec.State clerk wasn't paying attention...)
re #31 Or maybe he had an ORV plate for it? Did he live in a rural area?
No. Downriver suburb, and it was normal street transportation.
TROGG IS DAVID BLAINE
You have several choices: