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Grex > Coop13 > #224: When NextGrex starts, why not allow editing of posts | |
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richard
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When NextGrex starts, why not allow editing of posts
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Dec 18 08:51 UTC 2004 |
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.
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| 34 responses total. |
mary
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response 1 of 34:
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Dec 18 12:05 UTC 2004 |
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.
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cmcgee
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response 2 of 34:
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Dec 18 13:37 UTC 2004 |
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.
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mary
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response 3 of 34:
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Dec 18 14:36 UTC 2004 |
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.
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mary
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response 4 of 34:
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Dec 18 14:38 UTC 2004 |
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.
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richard
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response 5 of 34:
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Dec 18 19:34 UTC 2004 |
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.
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marcvh
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response 6 of 34:
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Dec 18 21:22 UTC 2004 |
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.
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mooncat
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response 7 of 34:
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Dec 18 22:04 UTC 2004 |
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?
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richard
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response 8 of 34:
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Dec 19 02:49 UTC 2004 |
#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?
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other
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response 9 of 34:
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Dec 19 05:40 UTC 2004 |
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.
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albaugh
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response 10 of 34:
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Dec 19 06:10 UTC 2004 |
2 words: Forget It.
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naftee
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response 11 of 34:
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Dec 19 07:21 UTC 2004 |
You're talking about the ID policy, right ?
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richard
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response 12 of 34:
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Dec 19 20:48 UTC 2004 |
#10 why?
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lowclass
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response 13 of 34:
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Dec 20 02:49 UTC 2004 |
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.)
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sholmes
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response 14 of 34:
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Dec 20 02:55 UTC 2004 |
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.
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keesan
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response 15 of 34:
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Dec 20 03:32 UTC 2004 |
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?).
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janc
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response 16 of 34:
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Dec 20 04:39 UTC 2004 |
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.
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mfp
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response 17 of 34:
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Dec 20 04:47 UTC 2004 |
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?!
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gelinas
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response 18 of 34:
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Dec 20 04:47 UTC 2004 |
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.
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spooked
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response 19 of 34:
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Dec 20 10:10 UTC 2004 |
We DO NOT want editing of posts, FULL STOP.
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cmcgee
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response 20 of 34:
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Dec 20 13:41 UTC 2004 |
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".
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albaugh
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response 21 of 34:
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Dec 20 22:16 UTC 2004 |
My advice to you'all and myself is: proofread before submitting.
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richard
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response 22 of 34:
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Dec 21 23:30 UTC 2004 |
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.
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mary
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response 23 of 34:
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Dec 22 00:22 UTC 2004 |
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.
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albaugh
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response 24 of 34:
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Dec 22 05:04 UTC 2004 |
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.
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