On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 12:07 PM Chris Adams linux@cmadams.net wrote:
So, I will say this is kind of a peeve of mine about server-based discussion systems (whether web or client like Slack/Discord): allowing people to edit messages, especially after people have replied to them, is a bad idea. Person 1 says "we should do XYZ", somebody replies "no XYZ is bad", and person 1 can go change their original message to say something completely different.
It kind of goes back to who "owns" (and I don't mean in the legal sense) the content. When the content is held on a server, the server owner has an editorial control that can be problematic.
Fixing typos sounds nice, but... just don't make typos, or proofread. :)
Chris Adams linux@cmadams.net
Usually when people edit messages there's a notation that it was edited. Some even note the number of times something has been edited, and by whom, including when mods/admin edit it. I forget what options discourse has for that. But also, when you are quoting someone on a forum, if they go back and change their message, i dont recall ever seeing a forum where it auto-updated the quote replies. So the person's original message will still show, however that does cause a bit of confusion when a new reader comes to the thread and sees a quote that doesn't match what they see in that person's post. There was a forum somewhere that the edit message would say "This post was edited by ${user} after replies by ${user2}, ${user3}, ${user4}" which helped eliminate that... but I believe that may have been something custom that the admin put in place. Also there's usually a time limit in place for edits... I've seen it as low as 30 seconds on some forums which negates some of this issue.