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Editing marks on posts and PMs


Heart

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2 hours ago, Skycaptain said:

Members cannot amend a post made by another member, unless as @Frankentan says, they're a member of the staff. In the rare cases that we edit posts we will inform the member why via a PM 

 

But if the poster subsequently amends their post - does that also amend the quote? 

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@Frankentan, no. I won't go into the whole details of how, in case someone in the future sees this for nefarious means, but we can isolate a post and keep the original text protected 

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11 hours ago, Pan Ficto. (on hiatus?) said:

Oh calm down Sally. The title of this thread very, very clearly states the edits are meant to show on forums AND in PM, yet the edits aren't showing in PM. And yeah it did start from a PM situation but the fact is it doesn't help the same situation in future (which it's meant to in theory, but it won't) if the edits aren't showing in PM which is what I was referring to.

 

My comment was at HEART (the OP), not you. If it was for you I would have mentioned your name, okay? 

Pan, you didn't read my post, did you.  What I said was that it's skeevy to say "a PM situation", because it makes everyone guess what that is.   And whatever comments you or anyone makes are read by everyone, and everyone can pay attention to and comment on them -- they posts aren't private conversations.   If you wanted to talk to Heart only, you could message them.  

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firewallflower

The discussion appears to have progressed/developed in a new direction, and I don't have much of anything new to contribute on the original basic question that hasn't been said by someone else already, but I guess I'll chime in to say that I'm with what, from reading back in the thread, seems to be the majority opinion here. To enumerate previously made points with which I agree:

 

  • In the absence of actual admod-accessible edit logs (showing specific edit content history, not just the fact that an edit was made), this feature seems pointless, if not actively counterproductive.
  • I was also under the impression that admods could see edit history anyway (even if hidden to users in general), but if some admod decisions would be based on whether a post has been edited (without being able to see previous content), that's all but paving the way for abuse of the system. If it's a case of word against word, what good is it to know that a post was edited if it might have been anything from a spelling mistake to a slur? The presence of that watermark proves nothing.
  • Similarly, it also has the potential to feed suspicion among members—not something we need—as well as to lead people to assume that significant revisions were made (content added or removed, minds changed, etc.) when in actuality the essence of a post may be exactly the same as the original.
  • Speaking as yet another person who regularly makes detail-corrective edits to many (if not most!) of my posts, I don't need people to see whenever I fix a punctuation error. And I don't need to see whenever someone else does the same thing! Admittedly, there's no real harm in it (and I suppose, if you look at it one way, a little extra motivation to edit prior to commenting could be a good thing 😉), but it is at the least an irritation. Unless an edit is relevant to the wider context of the discussion (in which case a note should probably be made of it anyway, because the important information is not the fact that the post was edited, it's the content that was edited), it's not something  that I feel should require public broadcasting every time.
  • The presence of the watermark beneath so very many posts does seem a pointless visual distraction/disruption in the flow of reading. Admittedly, in my case, I suspect I could soon get used to just skimming past the "edited at/by" tag and "tuning it out", but it may be more difficult for some people to ignore. Either way, in the meantime, it's unnecessary.
  • While I think I do understand the concerns motivating this change, I fail to see how this actually helps in practice. That doesn't mean there aren't benefits that I'm missing, of course (there could very well be, and I'd be interested in hearing from admods if that's the case, and can be said without breaking classification policies), but if there are, I don't see them—and I do see multiple downsides, whether significant or inconsequential.


Anyway, my apologies for redundancy. As I said, most of what I would have said has been articulated by others already, but figured I'd add my two or ten cents. There are almost certainly other points/subpoints that I failed to include (maybe I'll remember them later and, if I do, edit my post—regardless, the odds are good I'll catch an error shortly after submitting this reply :P), but I'll leave it at that for now. At the end of the day, as I see it, it's not the end of the world either way whether or not edited posts are watermarked as such, but I, for one, would welcome the return of the option to choose. :) Thanks for giving people the opportunity to weigh in on this!

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I was wondering what had happened - it’s a nuisance on my count as people can now how many times I edit my posts due to stupid spelling mistakes and typos - Also I thought all mods and that could see when a post was edited even if it was secretly edited?

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On 1/28/2019 at 12:45 AM, K.I.N.G said:

Also I thought all mods and that could see when a post was edited even if it was secretly edited?

Yep, that's what I also assumed.

 

The mods should have been more open that they can't see edits I think. I edited a message to hide content from a particular member, assuming the mods could see the edit and what the original content was. I didn't want to hide it from them, just from the member who seemed to have read far too much into what was said a year ago. I was very open to mods about this edit and my reasons for it. But it seems to have helped to spark all this nonsense (which is weird because I still can't see any edit watermark in PMs anyway, which is where the initial incident happened). If I'd known the other person involved would read the situation so wrongly, and even use it to excuse their behaviour, I would have just spoilered the damn message in an attempt to hide it from their eyes. But I truly believed mods could see edit history and would understand my reasoning given what happened. 

 

And just seeing that a post has been edited though changes nothing. I often go through my old posts and fix spelling mistakes I notice or change the formatting or whatever to make it nicer so I might have made a post a month ago that shows I only edited 5 mins ago. I guess someone could claim the original post contained hate speech and I suddenly edited it out, and actually their story is CONFIRMED by the presence of the edit warermark. If the mods can't see what was originally said, what the heck can they do about it?? 😕 

 

 

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Yup. Mods unable to see the edit history - and I don't just mean a timestamp that it was edited, but what was - certainly sounds baffling to me. I'd have thought of that as a standard software feature.

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22 minutes ago, Mysticus Insanus said:

Yup. Mods unable to see the edit history - and I don't just mean a timestamp that it was edited, but what was - certainly sounds baffling to me. I'd have thought of that as a standard software feature.

Yeah it is on other forums I've been on and one I modded. You just click the edit history button and see all original versions of what's been said prior to any edit. On the site I write for we had a guy trying to get away with trolling by editing posts after he'd made them then claiming others were on a witch hunt to get him off the site because everyone would tell him to fuck off in response to what seemed to be very reasonable posts. But when you open the edit history of his posts his initial comments said stuff like 'you're a stupid wh@re no one cares what you think, go dr@wn yourself' then he'd edit it to something sensible and relevant to the topic. We as mods could see all that but without that function it's very likely it would have been the others who got mad at him who would have got in trouble. They seemed very unreasonable and he was very good at being manipulative saying stuff like 'these people have followed me around other forums and target me. They're a ring of trolls who do this to heaps of people'. When actually they were innocent bystanders and he was the frikken troll!!

 

So to learn that the software on this site, which is paid for apparently, doesn't have that option? Even though it's a very basic safety feature?? That's truly baffling.

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On 1/25/2019 at 2:47 AM, James121 said:

[...] why on earth would you have an issue with it showing that you have edited it? There’s no logical reason to be concerned by it. 

 

See....I’ve edited and I’m not concerned!

Good for you!

 

@Heart, please add me to the "I hate the compulsory watermark" camp.  It is ugly and annoying, and it makes me feel micro-managed.

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11 hours ago, pickles mcgee said:

Good for you!

 

@Heart, please add me to the "I hate the compulsory watermark" camp.  It is ugly and annoying, and it makes me feel micro-managed.

That’s a weak argument. Ugly? I don’t know what to say! That’s just weak.

Microchipped? You have a user name and profile picture. You’ve given yourself the best microchip. It’s about accountability which something some don’t seem to like at all.

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firewallflower
41 minutes ago, Ceebs. said:

Echoing this...

As do I, albeit also already, as anticipated, getting used to ignoring it.

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1 hour ago, tase said:

@Heart is there even a tiny % of a chance it will switch back to the way is was?

Another echo...

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I'm also a person who does a lot of corrective edits, and while I think that I could adapt to having my edits visible, I would prefer that they wouldn't be. After all, adding an "also" for clarity or correcting my apostrophes aren't really something other people would find interesting or need to know about. I agree with Firewallflower's point about the benefits vs drawbacks of the change, 

On 1/26/2019 at 7:05 PM, firewallflower said:

While I think I do understand the concerns motivating this change, I fail to see how this actually helps in practice. That doesn't mean there aren't benefits that I'm missing, of course (there could very well be, and I'd be interested in hearing from admods if that's the case, and can be said without breaking classification policies), but if there are, I don't see them—and I do see multiple downsides, whether significant or inconsequential.

and I'd be interested in hearing from admods if there are significant benefits (even if they aren't able to fully tell us). If there are than I'll support this policy, but if the change doesn't help the admods I'm against it. 

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@Heart Any update on this?

I am tired of seeing edit marks on forum and I think the members have had enough time to weigh in on this.

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Everyone's comments have been noted. At the moment the admods are weighing up the pros and cons of going back to the old way. A decision one way or the other will be made soon. 

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Guest Jetsun Milarepa

Since I got this phone, I've made loads of typos that need editing...from misspellings to whole other words that it just amended things to. I've had teapot to kettle and newt to meet...all requiring edits that make me look like I'm up to no good.

I didn't edit my last one which was newt and that caused a querie as I guess nobody knew what I was on about!😂

Whatever the issues , hope its6sorted to everyone's satisfaction soon.

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6 hours ago, Athena32 said:

I'd be interested in hearing from admods if there are significant benefits (even if they aren't able to fully tell us). If there are than I'll support this policy, but if the change doesn't help the admods I'm against it. 

Same.

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Thank you so much to everyone for your input. I'm so sorry I haven't replied to everyone. I have  been meaning to, but there is a lot of very valuable input here and I just haven't had the time in the past few weeks.

 

Having said that, the decision has been reversed; you should all now be able to edit silently again, as before. The admods discussed and decided that the potential benefits did not outweigh the members' preferences. The potential benefits were very small to start with.

 

Thank you to everyone who posted!! :cake:

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Sage Raven Domino

Fwiw, another forum I post on allows to edit silently for the first 5 minutes, forces a mark on any edit made between the 6th and the 30th minute, and prohibits non-admods from editing posts that are older than 30 minutes. While I disagree with that 30-minute restriction, I don't mind the marks on edits made past the first 5 minutes - that's enough time to fix typos.

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On 2/5/2019 at 9:29 AM, Heart said:

Thank you so much to everyone for your input. I'm so sorry I haven't replied to everyone. I have  been meaning to, but there is a lot of very valuable input here and I just haven't had the time in the past few weeks.

 

Having said that, the decision has been reversed; you should all now be able to edit silently again, as before. The admods discussed and decided that the potential benefits did not outweigh the members' preferences. The potential benefits were very small to start with.

 

Thank you to everyone who posted!! :cake:

Thanks for reversing the decision, that will have made a lot of people happy!

 

I just hope that sometime soon there'll be a way that YOU guys can see edit history, see all amendments made etc. That's super important in a forum like this and would have saved a lot of trouble in certain situations and may in the future as well.

 

Thanks for the update though (I'm on a hiatus-thing hence why it took me ages to respond!) :):cake:

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6 hours ago, Pan Ficto. (on hiatus?) said:

Thanks for reversing the decision, that will have made a lot of people happy!

 

I just hope that sometime soon there'll be a way that YOU guys can see edit history, see all amendments made etc. That's super important in a forum like this and would have saved a lot of trouble in certain situations and may in the future as well.

 

Thanks for the update though (I'm on a hiatus-thing hence why it took me ages to respond!) :):cake:

What Ficto said (except the hiatus). Thanks, folks!

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11 hours ago, Sage Raven Domino said:

Fwiw, another forum I post on allows to edit silently for the first 5 minutes, forces a mark on any edit made between the 6th and the 30th minute, and prohibits non-admods from editing posts that are older than 30 minutes. While I disagree with that 30-minute restriction, I don't mind the marks on edits made past the first 5 minutes - that's enough time to fix typos.

This sounds like a really good system. Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, it's just an on/off thing here. At least, from my end, it's just a button I can flip on or off, so no options or anything like that.

 

11 hours ago, Pan Ficto. (on hiatus?) said:

Thanks for reversing the decision, that will have made a lot of people happy!

 

I just hope that sometime soon there'll be a way that YOU guys can see edit history, see all amendments made etc. That's super important in a forum like this and would have saved a lot of trouble in certain situations and may in the future as well.

 

Thanks for the update though (I'm on a hiatus-thing hence why it took me ages to respond!) :):cake:

Yeah, our software is pretty amazing all said and told, but nothing is perfect. I think we often forget to notice all the things it does right because it all just works. And saying good bye to all the frequent outages was heaven! Not seeing editing history though is indeed one of the less than ideal things. We'll keep an eye out for solutions and in the meantime just do our best.

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1 hour ago, Heart said:

Yeah, our software is pretty amazing all said and told, but nothing is perfect. I think we often forget to notice all the things it does right because it all just works. And saying good bye to all the frequent outages was heaven! Not seeing editing history though is indeed one of the less than ideal things. We'll keep an eye out for solutions and in the meantime just do our best.

 

Do you not have this option? Under System > Settings > Posting > General > Edit log

 

1rtac3.jpg

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1 hour ago, Tercy said:

 

Do you not have this option? Under System > Settings > Posting > General > Edit log

 

1rtac3.jpg

Under System the only option I see is System -> Overview -> Dashboard.

 

May I ask where you got this screenshot? I assume I'm supposed to be in the ACP, but maybe this is actually something for the webmasters. If that's the case, I can ask them.

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Ah, I see. My access to the ACP only shows the "Dashboard" part of Overview, nothing below that. This must be the domain of the webmasters then. I'll see if I can chat with them. It might be a question of the load on the servers, why they didn't enable this, but we'll see.

 

Thank you!

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On 1/25/2019 at 3:49 AM, ryn2 said:

I think edits (both their presence and the before and after content) should be available to the admods.  That’s part of why forums have admods.

 

I don’t see any benefit in making them visible to other posters by default unless it’s the only way the admods can also see the information.

I completely agree!! All the drama over little stuff becomes exhausting if you want an honest opinion.... must we control every freedom? It’s silly

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