femuse

I'm not sure where to post that question/comment.

In the various Forums I participate, there are always complaints about how/when,... we can edit our own posts.

The type most members like is:

_1_ nobody has replied to your post/and you posted less than 5 (or 3,..) mn ago.
you can do anything you like.


_2_ nobody has replied to your post/and you posted more than 5 (or 3,..) mn ago.
you can do anything you like
BUT: the little message "was edited" will appear.
You can even delete that post if you wish.


_3_ somebody has replied to your post:

you should not be allowed to modified the post in any way.
You make a new post where you make clear the modification you wanted to make.

in the case of "grave" error [using wrong word that can be taken as an insult,......], ask a moderator do edit for you.



The following comes from:

"phpBB Userguide
An in-depth documentation of phpBB, the world's most popular bulletin board script"

wich looks to me very similar to what we have here.

"...... If you edit a post after it has been replied to, a small message will appear at the bottom of it indicating how many times it has been edited, and when and by whom the last edit occurred.
.... You may not delete a post if it has been replied to (i.e. it is not the last post in the topic)"


I have always found this topic quite frustrating in some Forums:

_1_ Many people will not correct typos, just because they do not want to see "... edited", and this is why we often have sloppy messages.

_3_ Once you have answered a message, you want to be sure that the original message is still here and as it was when posted.
More than once, I have been arguing a point which has been deleted ... and I look like an idiot.


Your thoughts?

The_FD

well femuse, i think in the case of this forum we need to be able to edit our posts at any time to change a wrong writing or something. It is very important to write in the very right way as people often don't know very much of the language they are asking about...
And it is helpful that it says whether we edited a post or not because the one that asked for the traduction knows that the answer has changed and he should be careful

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L'histoire de la famille Bourdillon
Les fêtes d'Hébé
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femuse

I totaly agree.

AND what about when the question has changed ???

I guess my post was too long and too rambling ....

YES, people should know that a post they have already read has been changed. Let say in the first 2 mn, there is little chance it has been answered yet.

A lot of people do not like to see "edited at ..." , so they don't bother to correct spelling errors. I mean 2 or 3 minutes after posting.

much later, after somebody answered, the "edited because I used the wrong word" is not good enough to tell us what was changed.

He should have to write new a new post mentioning about that change.

And later on, if you go to "last post" in thread, you will miss the fact that the original post was edited.


_ The poster may have asked to translate something about "apples".

_ You do the job.

_ He edits his post into "oranges" ....

.... and we are all lost.


Great ! I've just discovered where the expression "comparing apples to oranges" comes from. :D

Thanks, I need to excersise my brain.

femuse

Interesting. I did a little experiment.

It looks like ONLY the last edit is posted.

... which means:

somebody could make 10 edits to a post over 3 days and we wouldn't know about it.

I could come back tomorrow and totaly change my original post because I thought it was foolish.

... wouldn't you feel like a fool, answering a question which is not here? [I won't - relax ]

This has happened to me in the past (not here), so I know what could happen.

I have seen it done even out of shear malice. Somebody came back months later in a Forum & deleted all his posts ("delete" was unabled, so he just wiped them out). Dozens of people discussed "blank" topics at length.

This is of course an extreme case. May never happen. or will it ?

The_FD

well everythings depends on how deep is the edit you have to do.
The author is the only one who can decide whether he should start a new thread or just edit his previous post.
If he does not get his answer he will know he did it the wrong way... and have to do it the other way...

__________________
L'histoire de la famille Bourdillon
Les fêtes d'Hébé
The flying dancer dancing

bernhard

Hi Femuse, all this is managable by this Forum software, I can choose, you can only edit if the post is not older than a few minuts, choose if the edited message is displayed or not. BUT, for now everybody has a complete liberty of doing what he wants, and I think it is OK, as people here are quite nice and adults, for now we had just one problem. So I will think about it, but for me this way is pretty cool.

__________________
Bernhard
(Admin)

suggestions ?

femuse

let's hope it will stay that way.

sometimes, it's best to prevent problems from happenig in the first place. The bigger a Forum becomes, the more ... etc...

And don't forget that it's not always "malice": most people don't think about mentioning what type of correction they made.

But, I will keep my mouth shut for now and hope for the best.