Proposal: Disabling the edit function for old posts

moocha · Watchman Joined: 21 Oct 2003 Posts: 5722

Wouldn't it make sense to disable the edit function for one's own posts after a certain amount of time has passed since the post was first created - say, two weeks or so?
The benefits:

It would force people to bump threads in case they have something to add. If they edit old posts, it of course doesn't show up on egosearch so people who mainly use the forum to provide tech support can miss those altered posts easily. If they would get bumped, this could be avoided. Happened to me recently.
It would remove the ability of people to alter old posts, which thus can be accurately preserved to serve as reference. Happened to me recently too in a little flamewar / offtopic drift (that I started, though, shame on me ).

The costs:

Someone has to implement and test that. Can't be too difficult though.
It would probably impact performance. Probably in a negligible manner.

This modification isn't that important, but I think it'd be useful.
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Genone · Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2005 6:58 am Post subject:

I'm against this. I sometimes post announcements / status reports and then I have to edit the first post all the time, the documentation forum probably has many posts with a similar situation. However, as I understand the first issue I'd rather have the "thread was modified" (or whatever the yellow marker is called) flag set when posts are modified.

Deathwing00

moocha · Watchman Joined: 21 Oct 2003 Posts: 5722

penguinlnx · Posted: Sun Apr 24, 2005 8:38 pm Post subject:

Another alternative could be a dual list, one for new posts, or new replies,
and one for edited, updated, or very old posts that have been replied to.
This could serve all the former functions, and prevent say very old threads from jumping back into the 'new' pile without a good reason.
The thread owner (only) could be notified and have the option of 'ressurrecting' the original thread or moving to a 'solved' section:

(a) New threads, live threads, ressurrected threads.

(b) Solved threads, for people looking for quick solutions to specific problems

(b) edited threads, minor corrections, renewed interest but not confirmed by Thread owner or Admin

(c) old threads that weren't solved, updated, or affirmed as 'live' again.

Tamsco · Guru Joined: 04 Aug 2004 Posts: 313 Location: dmse.mit.edu

Another consideration is that people won't be able to change the topic to add a [solved].
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Deathwing00 · Posted: Sun May 01, 2005 10:02 pm Post subject:

gentsquash · Posted: Tue May 17, 2005 10:05 pm Post subject:

I am but a humble user --and am also in favor of leaving postings
editable, forever. I regularly go over my old posts, sometimes
to add a [Solved], sometimes to put a link to a variant solution
in another thread.

And several times I have found, and fixed, my own spelling
errors. It would annoy me to no end if my spelling errors stayed
forever in an archive. Especially as *I* keep seeing them, when
I review the my earlier postings for possible updates.

====
By the way, I occasionally search for "[Solved]" threads, just to
learn techniques that work. I think there is a good reason to
allow responsible posters to adjoin [Solved] to their thread-titles.
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killfire · l33t Joined: 04 Oct 2003 Posts: 618

what about is after 2 weeks they were append only? so everything that existed had to stay the same, but for instance you could add [solved] to the title, cause its adding. also, if you wanted to give cross reference links that would be fine too...

i think that also fixes the problem of someone editing what they said...

also, i think that edited posts should show up as maybe not new, but at least at the top of the search, with a special edited flag next to them...

killfire
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