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post editing time limit has been revised


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John, is there a reason for the change other than being in line with other forums? Just asking. :) 

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1 minute ago, Rehab1 said:

John, is there a reason for the change other than this is what other forums are doing?  Just asking. :) 

Because people who have accounts that are flagged for "content moderated" can go back and sabotage previous posts otherwise.

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1 hour ago, John Eucist said:

Because people who have accounts that are flagged for "content moderated" can go back and sabotage previous posts otherwise.

Makes sense! Thanks!

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Too bad, I find unlimited edit time quite useful, as errors can be corrected right at the place where they have been made. This is actually the case on more technically oriented high quality social platforms like stackexchange or github, where one can edit the posts for unlimited time. 

Have there been any problems with posts that were changed to not abide by the forum rules?

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8 minutes ago, Mono said:

Too bad, I find unlimited edit time quite useful, as errors can be corrected right at the place where they have been made. This is actually the case on more technically oriented high quality social platforms like stackexchange or github, where one can edit the posts for unlimited time. 

Have there been any problems with posts that were changed to not abide by the forum rules?

Agreed. Thinking about guides/tutorials... Now, it will be impossible to update them as new things/problems are discovered....

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I just stumbled over the edit block for the first time (trying to smoothen a post but couldn't). I have the feeling that this will lead me to use this forum a lot less. But then, that might not be such a bad thing in the end.

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8 minutes ago, Mono said:

I just stumbled over the edit block for the first time (trying to smoothen a post but couldn't). I have the feeling that this will lead me to use this forum a lot less. But then, that might not be such a bad thing in the end.

Using the forum less - riding your EUC more ;)

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That's definitely bad, I updated my ACM cable melt OP weeks after it was created, for example.

Can you make it at least a few hours?

Maybe this is a temporary solution until the saboteurs have given up, and then we get unlimited back?

Can't you just deal with the bad accounts directly? Block their login, stop just them from editing, ...?

Sorry for the trouble with asshats...

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39 minutes ago, Vik's said:

Agreed. Thinking about guides/tutorials... Now, it will be impossible to update them as new things/problems are discovered....

That's an excellent point.

One of our members putting together a program of exercises for new riders in his club is going to need to do that and has already made use of it outside the half hour limit, if I recall correctly.

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I must confess I did come across this on a modelling forum where a guy, Brian, let's say, who for years had given really good advice and had been a leading expert on a particular topic suddenly lost it. By his behaviour it looks like he, for some unknown reason, had a complete nervous breakdown, it certainly didn't look like anyone on the forum upset him. He went back and typed gobbledegook in every post. It was hugely frustrating you would look something up, there would be a dozen people saying "wow that's brilliant Brian, thank you so much for showing us how to do that" and his post would say:"{]|€>,!\$>}=^€}%,^{%*,^]{~,*>**\{~~*,}€{¥" or words to that effect! He had been such a key contributor that the forum was pretty much completely useless after his breakdown.

However, I certainly regularly edit my posts, often when I think if English isn't the reader's first language this might not be understood. I would certainly like to see the time out being at least a day or two, preferably a week or two, which ought to be enough to prevent much sabotage.

yep managed to edit this Saturday at 8p.m. OK ?

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1 hour ago, meepmeepmayer said:

Can you make it at least a few hours?

24 hours for now while I try to find a better solution.

 

1 hour ago, meepmeepmayer said:

Can't you just deal with the bad accounts directly? Block their login, stop just them from editing, ...?

If they are banned then they can't edit or do anything. If they are just on "content moderated" then the forum software allows them to edit. To put them in a different "edit time limit" requires them to be in a different "group" which requires admin credentials to execute. If I made all mods an admin it's a security risk that I'm sure many mods wouldn't even want that potential liability (for example, password being hacked) because essentially they would have "root" to the server. That is also why I rarely ever use the forum as "admin" myself to decrease that risk.

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Short term, do what helps you. Long term, I think only unlimited works. @Mono said it very well, this is a technical forum with many high-quality/effort posts (some of them;)) which is different from a small talk forum where short edit limit might stop nobody.

If I were you and the problem does not go away after a few days, I'd make short work of saboteurs and just ban them. No need to be too lenient.

Thanks, and good luck.

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Here is a link from stackexchange where a user complained about the 5 minutes editing time limit with replies from users explaining why it's actually a good thing. What do you guys think of their arguments in relation to an editing time limit for this forum?

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/78573/why-is-the-time-limit-for-editing-comments-only-5-minutes

Which incidentally contradicts what @Mono said earlier unless their rules have changed since 2011 (or that this wasn't what Mono was referring to). :P 
 

2 hours ago, Mono said:

This is actually the case on more technically oriented high quality social platforms like stackexchange or github, where one can edit the posts for unlimited time. 

 

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Looks like at SA they have other parts with no time limits, and only "comments" (not sure what else there is - "questions" and "answers" aka the real thing?) are limited. Not sure.

Here, every thread where the OP collects ongoing information will be stopped by a limit. Just saying.

This is quite similar to discussion about hackers/cheaters/exploiters on game servers. Admins often worry too much about fairness and trying to please everyone (the accused included) instead of just banning the problematic person and that being good enough.

You could say "one more spite edit and you're banned" and that's plenty of leeway you're giving, concerning you apparently have quite some trouble.

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There is also a workable ground between permanent bans and not banning at all.  I've seen people on numerous forums respond well to temporary bans, anything from 24 hours to months at a time.  And some get miffed by bans and don't come back ... which solves the problem in another way ...

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1 hour ago, John Eucist said:

Which incidentally contradicts what @Mono said earlier unless their rules have changed since 2011 (or that this wasn't what Mono was referring to). :P 

It does not contradict my remark. On stackexchange you can edit comments on posts only for a few minutes. But, the posts themselves you can edit as long as you want to. I did chose my wording carefully, as I was aware of that and in this forum comments on posts don't even exist. I also understand the reasons, which is different from yours. They want to avoid that later comments become out of context without the ability to backtrack (comments don't have a history) when previous comments undergo heavy edits. I am undecided whether this introduces more problems than it solves on stackexchange.

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1 hour ago, John Eucist said:

Nope. It was a preventative measure which was triggered by a recent problematic event.

FTR, the most inappropriately offensive post that I can remember to have seen in this forum was removed by the poster after a day or two. So it can apparently go both ways.

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1 hour ago, John Eucist said:

 

Here is a link from stackexchange where a user complained about the 5 minutes editing time limit with replies from users explaining why it's actually a good thing. What do you guys think of their arguments in relation to an editing time limit for this forum?

 

Here is a sensible argument from Stackexchange: 

The time limit makes it worse, not better. If you accidentally submit a comment with an error, you'll might get a barrage of snarky counter comments descending into a comedy of errors. It is also incredibly insensitive to individuals with special needs who need extra time. 

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8 hours ago, John Eucist said:

This is now in line with how most other forums operate.

Just checked the French EUC forum and found unlimited editing time.

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3 hours ago, Keith said:

I must confess I did come across this on a modelling forum where a guy, Brian, let's say, who for years had given really good advice and had been a leading expert on a particular topic suddenly lost it. By his behaviour it looks like he, for some unknown reason, had a complete nervous breakdown, it certainly didn't look like anyone on the forum upset him. He went back and typed gobbledegook in every post. It was hugely frustrating you would look something up, there would be a dozen people saying "wow that's brilliant Brian, thank you so much for showing us how to do that" and his post would say:"{]|€>,!\$>}=^€}%,^{%*,^]{~,*>**\{~~*,}€{¥" or words to that effect! He had been such a key contributor that the forum was pretty much completely useless after his breakdown.

However, I certainly regularly edit my posts, often when I think if English isn't the reader's first language this might not be understood. I would certainly like to see the time out being at least a day or two, preferably a week or two, which ought to be enough to prevent much sabotage.

That is a good example but hardly a representative one.

Either way, this forum is such a nice crowd to be part of - thanks to @John Eucist and all mods and members! So every thing John does is pretty OK with me as long as he listen to other peoples opinion (reasoned) and don't go "{]|€>,!\$>}=^€}%,^{%*,^]{~,*>**\{~~*,}€{¥" :D

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2 hours ago, Mono said:

It does not contradict my remark. On stackexchange you can edit comments on posts only for a few minutes. But, the posts themselves you can edit as long as you want to. I did chose my wording carefully, as I was aware of that and in this forum comments on posts don't even exist. I also understand the reasons, which is different from yours. They want to avoid that later comments become out of context without the ability to backtrack (comments don't have a history) when previous comments undergo heavy edits. I am undecided whether this introduces more problems than it solves on stackexchange.

That's why I followed up in the same sentence saying "or that this wasn't what Mono was referring to". :) 

That said, an entire thread in this forum (after the original first post) can be considered as "comments" (it's just a name). If certain "in between" posts (or "comments") get changed it could put the rest of the thread out of context just like what you said: "later comments become out of context without the ability to backtrack (comments don't have a history) when previous comments undergo heavy edits."

1 hour ago, Mono said:

FTR, the most inappropriately offensive post that I can remember to have seen in this forum was removed by the poster after a day or two. So it can apparently go both ways.

I don't know which post you were referring to but it's not the one that caused this precautionary measure.
 

1 hour ago, Rehab1 said:

Here is a sensible argument from Stackexchange: 

The time limit makes it worse, not better. If you accidentally submit a comment with an error, you'll might get a barrage of snarky counter comments descending into a comedy of errors. It is also incredibly insensitive to individuals with special needs who need extra time. 

Hence why it's now 1440 minutes instead of 15 minutes for now. Gonna be really really "special needs" if it take more than 1440 minutes. :P 

But I completely agree that if someone is maintaining a list of something (e.g. Marty Backe's Gotway Wishlist) that needs updating at a much later time then it can be a problem.
 

1 hour ago, Mono said:

Just checked the French EUC forum and found unlimited editing time.

I am speculating that that's because they decided to use the same forum software as this forum and it's default setting is set to unlimited. This is the same reason why this forum has been set to unlimited all this time.

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