Forums » Suggestions
Preventing users from Editing or Deleting Posts
We occasionally have a problem with a player having some kind of issue, and deleting all their recent posts, making existing threads nonsensical.
It's pretty common for other forums to prevent edits and post-deletions after 5 minutes or so. I thought we might be generous and make it 30 minutes. After that, only forum administrators and the like would be able to edit or delete a post, the original author would lose access.
I appreciate that this is a bit of a change from the way things have historically worked. I'm not sure if there might be special ramifications.. if anyone has threads where they "maintain" the first-post, based on thread responses or something like that. If so, perhaps this "edit" behaviour could be specific to most forums, but not all of them.
Anyway, feedback is welcome.
It's pretty common for other forums to prevent edits and post-deletions after 5 minutes or so. I thought we might be generous and make it 30 minutes. After that, only forum administrators and the like would be able to edit or delete a post, the original author would lose access.
I appreciate that this is a bit of a change from the way things have historically worked. I'm not sure if there might be special ramifications.. if anyone has threads where they "maintain" the first-post, based on thread responses or something like that. If so, perhaps this "edit" behaviour could be specific to most forums, but not all of them.
Anyway, feedback is welcome.
I've run into problems with certain posters editing their posts/replies, which make my replies look inane. This is the reasons why I started including screenshots of what was originally posted. So i am all for this. Though, some posts in community projects and role play forums kind of require the ability to be edited.
Would it be possible for an Edit history to be available?
Would it be possible for an Edit history to be available?
If not an edit history, at least lock editing allowed for RP, where some manage the first page for their events. Other places I'm not sure what actual issues there would be.
If not an edit history, at least lock editing allowed for RP, where some manage the first page for their events. Other places I'm not sure what actual issues there would be.
Allowing editing in RP and Community Projects would be simpler than implementing an edit history. So, I'm all for that.
Continued feedback welcome.
Allowing editing in RP and Community Projects would be simpler than implementing an edit history. So, I'm all for that.
Continued feedback welcome.
Just disable edit function when reply has been made.
For RP either
1 ) edit button sends an "email" to guides for updating the post with new text (or confirm edit)
2) make a specific thread type in RP for event / story where the author can use the former edit feature and have it moderated by guides. If author break the rules: thread deletion and banishment for repeated offenders.
For RP either
1 ) edit button sends an "email" to guides for updating the post with new text (or confirm edit)
2) make a specific thread type in RP for event / story where the author can use the former edit feature and have it moderated by guides. If author break the rules: thread deletion and banishment for repeated offenders.
Just disable edit function when reply has been made.
We recently had someone delete a thread, that didn't have replies, after about a day. I don't want that kind of thing, so it'll be time-limited and not based on responses.
Making an edit-request system that emails Guides, or specialized thread-types are both more complex than just white-listing RP from the issue in general. I appreciate the problem may continue to irritate people in RP, but it's a lot less of a problem than what impacts General, Suggestions and the like.
It might be better to just have the system put in an edit-timestamp on any message that gets edited after 30 minutes, on boards that allow it. But, again, that's more time consuming to implement that I'm likely to spend on development, right now.
Still, good feedback and appreciated.
We recently had someone delete a thread, that didn't have replies, after about a day. I don't want that kind of thing, so it'll be time-limited and not based on responses.
Making an edit-request system that emails Guides, or specialized thread-types are both more complex than just white-listing RP from the issue in general. I appreciate the problem may continue to irritate people in RP, but it's a lot less of a problem than what impacts General, Suggestions and the like.
It might be better to just have the system put in an edit-timestamp on any message that gets edited after 30 minutes, on boards that allow it. But, again, that's more time consuming to implement that I'm likely to spend on development, right now.
Still, good feedback and appreciated.
I'm fond of the "This post has been edited, see previous versions... " links on some forums. Keeps people honest.
Including history would be neat, but it's more work than you might expect to implement. You have to restructure the database to support storing multiple versions of each post, you have to build an interface for displaying those to people, and you have to incorporate a system that mods can use to purge or edit the histories so that we can't just look up old versions of posts from before the mods removed whatever offensive content got their knickers in a twist. Might also have to fiddle with the search algorithm so that those changes don't break it. Not worth the effort considering scarcity of dev-time.
A simple "Edited <when> by <whom>" notice is a lot easier to do. The "correct" way to do that would require two additional fields in the database as well as some changes to the forum rendering to display that information when present. However, there's a quick-and-dirty alternative way to implement it: simply append the notice as text to the body of the post after the edit is submitted but before the entry is saved. That way no new DB fields are required and no changes to rendering code are needed. The downsides are that people could forge an edit notice when first writing a post to make it look like a moderator is harassing them by editing everything they write, edit notices wouldn't be able to update themselves if the devs change the wording later, and the timestamps wouldn't be able to automatically present themselves based on the viewer's local timezone/locale. Not ideal, but I think it would be preferable to no notice at all, and it's an order of magnitude less effort than doing it properly.
A simple "Edited <when> by <whom>" notice is a lot easier to do. The "correct" way to do that would require two additional fields in the database as well as some changes to the forum rendering to display that information when present. However, there's a quick-and-dirty alternative way to implement it: simply append the notice as text to the body of the post after the edit is submitted but before the entry is saved. That way no new DB fields are required and no changes to rendering code are needed. The downsides are that people could forge an edit notice when first writing a post to make it look like a moderator is harassing them by editing everything they write, edit notices wouldn't be able to update themselves if the devs change the wording later, and the timestamps wouldn't be able to automatically present themselves based on the viewer's local timezone/locale. Not ideal, but I think it would be preferable to no notice at all, and it's an order of magnitude less effort than doing it properly.