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Editing Your Posts

I find myself using the Edit tool a lot on my posts. So imagine my surprise when I noticed that I could only edit my most recent post. If I noticed a mistake in a previous post after I'd made a new one, I could no longer change it.

Then I found that there is a second constraint: I cannot edit posts that are over an hour old.

Is there a specific reason the forum is set up like this?
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
Spammers were coming in and making innocuous posts, then coming back some time later and editing them to include all kinds of spam, links, and so on. It became problematic enough at one point that a time limit was established for editing posts.
 

Ireth

Myth Weaver
Apparently it's to deter spambots. They'd make innocent-looking posts, then go back and edit random links and stuff into them.

EDIT: Heh, ninja'd. Basically, what our Feline Overlord said. XD
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
We had to set it up that way because of spammers. They would make a post that looked normal, wait a while, and then edit it to become spam. Not only was that bypassing the spam filters, but we'd miss it because forum regulars don't really look at many old posts. There's also technical limitations limiting our options.

There've been numerous threads about it, and you can search for them if you have more questions. As far as regular dialogue goes, I don't really think we need to be editing too many old posts. It can throw people off when you edit after people have already seen it.

Regardless, this is becoming mainstream among forums, and will likely continue to do so.
 
If I may suggest an alternative...

Place a minimum post count constraint on the Edit tool. The current rules apply for all members with under 100 posts, but once they reach the 100 post mark, the limit is extended to one day. I doubt any spambots would be willing to make 100 posts before editing their spam in. Even if they did, it would become obvious that these "seemingly innocuous posts" were being generated and were not written by a real person by the time they reached 25 to 50 posts.

I understand there's still the issue of going back to edit things that people have already read, but I think the only place people would do that to ill effect would be in Kill This Thread, where it would be funny instead of annoying. We're all trolls in there.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
If I may suggest an alternative...

This discussion has been hashed out a number of times, and many of the alternatives people have suggested are impossible under the current technical limitations of the software. If that ever changes, I am sure that we will consider alternatives as they become available to us.
 
That one's far from impossible. This forum is hosted on vBulletin, right? You can put a minimum post requirement on everything with vBulletin.
 

Black Dragon

Staff
Administrator
That one's far from impossible. This forum is hosted on vBulletin, right? You can put a minimum post requirement on everything with vBulletin.

PlotHolio,

The setting for "Time Limit on Editing of Posts" is a universal, forum-wide setting. Only moderators are exempt from it, and that only applies to the forums that they are assigned to.

As for limiting the "edit post" function to members who reach a post threshold, that would require creating new tiers of "Usergroups" with different permissions, and automating promotion from one group to the next. That would take some work to pull off seamlessly. And even then, I don't think that new members should be blocked from editing their posts entirely.

Frankly, I think that a one hour time limit is plenty, and more and more forums are moving to that standard. If you've made a mistake and need for it to be corrected, private message the moderators and they will take care of it for you.
 

Ewolf20

Minstrel
PlotHolio,

The setting for "Time Limit on Editing of Posts" is a universal, forum-wide setting. Only moderators are exempt from it, and that only applies to the forums that they are assigned to.

As for limiting the "edit post" function to members who reach a post threshold, that would require creating new tiers of "Usergroups" with different permissions, and automating promotion from one group to the next. That would take some work to pull off seamlessly. And even then, I don't think that new members should be blocked from editing their posts entirely.

Frankly, I think that a one hour time limit is plenty, and more and more forums are moving to that standard. If you've made a mistake and need for it to be corrected, private message the moderators and they will take care of it for you.
i think I'll be doing that for now on.
 
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