Been hoping for this. Thanks robin!

Awesome. Frankly the unlimited editing was useful only in a few edge cases....biggest one I can think of is people with large parts for sale threads that have been updated over months to account for new stuff and sold stuff.

It was nice to see SOLD in the topic when an item sold.

And also annoying when people edited out the price, IMO. Two sides to everything lol...

Eww. Bad news for bad spellers.

Edit : Just had to throw an edit in The Edit thread.

Would prefer 8-12 hrs to edit. Sometimes it takes me longer than 4 hrs to sober up.

Funny!

And a third side. I liked the idea of going back into old tech posts to be able to update them with info ie parts availability, new technique, correct an inaccuracy, etc rather than bumping an old tech post and making a user connect the posts/dots so to speak. Perhaps different editing rules for different sub-forums? Just a thought...

viperrwk

I totally understand why you did this, we had to sadly implement the same kind of policy at Ars, too many people trying to go back and edit out history.

It's too bad for some threads though. Like for my translite sale threads, they get pretty huge, no one wants to read 25 pages to figure out what's going on, so I was always good about editing the opening post to reflect the current status of order with a dated message.

Make editing posts past 12 hours require moderator approval before it goes live.

Will will be able to the edit the title of the original post? That way we can change the price of a machine for sale?

Good point. The title should be appended and not edited.

Marking a machine down and or sold is truly a time saving feature for both posters and readers. Also, not being able to edit the title (to mark down the price of a machine) may encourage sellers to create duplicate posts with new pricing.

If we need to change anything, we can PM a mod to make a change, yes?

I unintentionally had to edit my above post.

There are some shady sellers going back and deleting posts, and it sucks. My opinion, maybe 4 hours for posts in the for sale section, and longer in other sections?

Maybe no limit in the tech sections as my guess is this isn't a problem there?

As long as we can still edit our avatars, I'm good.

I try to update topics I create if there was a change in status. I've this for post much older than the 24hrs proposed. I know that post reflect a resolution with a check so maybe that could be carried over to the top thread for people searching out tech solutions.

That's funny. I was thinking the same thing.

I would rather see a revision count on edited posts, and the ability to view older revisions.

Maybe add only and only For Sale threads?

Yeah, I have had threads with tech issues that last a couple of weeks, nice to go back when its done and write "FIXED!" in the title.

Sledge hammer to fix a minor issue

A person should always be able to edit their post
Better (firmer) moderation would make idiots think before they post garbage

I have an idea:

After the edit time is up, change EDIT to APPEND. This way you can add to a post but you're not able to remove or modify the previous posted data (for historical purposes).

This doesn't solve thread title issues (marking something as sold or fixed) but it can add that information to the post itself.

.. Maybe thread icons could solve that? You could have an option to add a check-mark as a thread's icon to mark something as fixed?

There's always the option of using the little link just to the right of the full topic header to mark the thread as "resolved". That link will hopefully remain active even if the threads are no longer able to be edited.

Agreed. Maybe just can add stuff to title, but not take away?

Ouch.

I agree.

This doesn't work for me at all.
Huge disappointment for anyone who runs long very-useful threads with any kind of lists or summaries. (this is an understatement)

1. Every club thread I run has posts at the top that are a "summary" of the good information the users bring to the club. I edit them on a weekly basis.

2. Every restore thread I run has 1-2 posts at the top with my task lists, shopping lists, and hours. I edit them on a daily basis.

3. Aurich or anyone selling something amazing keeps his data current in the first thread.

4. Teachers like vid1900 often put specialized information in the first few posts, knowing that the thread will be 30+ pages some day, and they will need to update that information over time.

I'll stop at 4 use cases.

In my mind the bad easily outweighs the good if this solution is implemented. I can think of one or two times in my two years on the site where I actually ran across a dead thread, and I didn't care at all. That tells me the information wasn't important. If it was a drama thread, I don't care at all, I'm not here for the drama. I'm here to share information and learn.

If we limit the people on this site who contribute the most: vid1900, aurich, just to name a few to maintain summaries of good information at the top of their threads, then you are creating a bigger problem than the current one that was frustrating you.

If this idea gets implemented (as its currently thought out), it vastly limits the value I can bring to Pinside. I specialize in long, live, ongoing threads that have strong summaries at the top... Clubs and Restore threads. Please find another solution, or reconsider which case is actually more painful to Pinside.

Looking forward to a better solution...

-mof

Appending to a post would be a good compromise

The advantage of being able to view old revisions would be that it'd be trivial to document the people doing the things that the timer is supposed to prevent (and won't completely).

So, you didn't read through the entire thread, did you? If so, you would've seen this:

I think if Robin implements these changes to the new rules, that should alleviate your concerns, shouldn't it?

Sorry to sound negative but this is going to wreck for sale threads with long lists of items, as this will make it impossible to edit the original post with the list. This will result in confusion, unnecessary posts saying, "x has sold," and people asking about stuff that is already gone because it's still on the for sale list. In my case, I could no longer edit anyway because it has been too long but can an exception be made in the marketplace sub-forum?

Edit: Oops, I didn't see your input on FS threads Robin. Please disregard. Oh wait, or I can just blank out this post and make it devoid of all useful information.

Yes it does. Thanks for pointing that out.

It's sure a big burden on the moderators. I'll need them to unlock about 20+ of my threads. I'm just one person.

-mof

Will I be the first to admit that "I'm guilty" of this type of behaviour. But again I'm bring myself back to Aurich's point.

Actually wait, my DMD Extender thread needs to be editable indefinitely due to changing parts supplier links. Robin it would be nice if a per-user request method was implemented (and soon).

Edit: D'OPE! Robin, you're playing games with me today.

Most of the times I've seen this has been with sale threads. Maybe just implement it in the for sale section?

Maybe the thread starter could have the ability to edit only the first post in a thread and the title?

This would allow them to summarize the items for sale, and re-title threads that are non-informative (like when a thread title is only "Problem" or "Dracula".....

I suppose if we are to brainstorm on this, we should start by clearly defining the problem for those of us doing the brainstorming, and consider the problem's cost to the site/community. I certainly have much to learn about this if I can be of help with ideas.

Looking for any tendencies to narrow the scope of the problem, and a few other questions come to mind:

* When you say you see "a lot of people" -- I have to be honest and say I've seen this once or twice in almost two years on the site. I'm wondering what I'm doing that I'm missing most of them? If I am wrong about the "amount" I've seen, perhaps that underlines how un-important of an issue it is to me. (Of course I would care more if I owned the site and wanted to see more order and better behavior, I'm just giving feedback.)
* Can you point out a few threads that demonstrate this problem? How frequent is this problem? How bad is this problem?
* Do they tend to happen in a particular "area" ('for sale' was suggested)
* Do they tend to NOT be committed by people over a particular "karma" level?
* What is the cost to pinside/community so we can weigh that when we consider various solutions?
* Is the problem seasonal, is it increasing, is it steady?
* What do other forums do to limit the problem?
* Does this ever occur with regulars on the site, or just people that delete accounts (hit and runs)

(A wise man once taught me, "Each and every solution creates a new problem, the goal is to create smaller problems with each solution." I think in today's lingo, it would be more like, "No single solution satisfies all use cases, try to satisfy the most important use case with each new solution."

-mof

Title and first post append only. That way you can add all the information that you would like to the first post and change the title to fixed, sold, etc...

B great for a fs thread to add a sold box to activate and sold enters the title

Do you think the new "resolved" checkbox solves this?
-mof

I wasn't aware that this was even a new feature to be honest. I think it's been around for at least the past year or so. Since I've started posting here at any rate.

Some people say something and want to take it back and erase it days later. Maybe this will make people think twice about what the write (probably not).
Also I notice sellers erase the asking price out of their for sale posts, so later on people won't call them idiots for selling to low or greedy bastards for selling to high. Seller's can't win, but sale posts that have been sold are a good reference for people looking at selling or purchasing their next game. I feel that if you do a sale post for free (or make a donation), then pay no commission if your item sells, the least you can do is help other buyers and sellers have your sale transaction as a reference for the future. This is fair.

I like someone else's idea up top. Let people edit the posts all they want, but also be able to click a button and their edits pop up in a different color. After a few days though. Give people a couple days to come to their senses.

Best forum software on the internet, due to thoughtful and skilled development like this.

How about only allowing striking (where the line runs through the old text) as a means of edit?

You could still add more to a post (like new prices), but all of your old text is still archived forever.