A request for the abillity to edit posts after hitting "post."

December 4, 2005 10:49 AM

Top of my Christmas list: The ability to go back and edit my posts. Also a quote block might be nice.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy to Feature Requests at 10:49 AM (58 comments total)

The ability to go back and edit my posts.

totally--we should be able to fix grammar/spelling mistakes or broken links, etc.
posted by amberglow at 11:00 AM on December 4, 2005

Just thinking the same thing myself, after the spell checker left me with "honorific" instead of "horrific."

A lot of times one rushes a response to the previous comment, to get in there before a three page rant on the comment before that one.

How about a 24 hour grace period, and a fifty cent charge to copy edit your own posts?
posted by StickyCarpet at 11:02 AM on December 4, 2005

If there's no way to limit the scope of what you can edit, I think this is very quickly going to become a bad, bad thing...
posted by hototogisu at 11:03 AM on December 4, 2005

Preview button broke?
posted by sohcahtoa at 11:04 AM on December 4, 2005

sohcahtoa: A lot of times one rushes a response to the previous comment, to get in there before a three page rant on the comment before that one.
posted by StickyCarpet at 11:06 AM on December 4, 2005

I share Hototogisu's concern, it could quickly be abused. But a more robust spell checker would be nice.
posted by LarryC at 11:11 AM on December 4, 2005

Now that I have had a moment to think about it:

to get in there before a three page rant on the comment before that one.

would scan better as:

to get in there ahead of a three page rant on the comment before that one.

What's the harm in fixing it? Especially if I am willing to paypal fifty cents or a buck?
posted by StickyCarpet at 11:14 AM on December 4, 2005

Most forums allow editing but also display an "edited at 12:00". What would be really cool would be a history of edits that could be seen after clicking on a link. This would stop people from abusing the system.
posted by null terminated at 11:15 AM on December 4, 2005

on metachat, i can edit everyone elses posts. now, that's cool.
posted by quonsar at 11:17 AM on December 4, 2005

What would be really cool would be a history of edits that could be seen after clicking on a link. This would stop people from abusing the system.

Defo. Without that feature, editing comments would be horribly abused.
posted by jack_mo at 11:23 AM on December 4, 2005

I love you, SLoG, but I have to disagree on this one. The forums I've been on that allowed editing turn into a huge mess. As it stands it drives me crazy when comments are deleted, because it breaks the conversation and I can never figure out what people are referring to when they say "and when you said such & such. . " Imagine that to the nth power. Or, if you can track edits, imagine a thread that goes:
Comment, posted at 10:15 pm
Edited for spelling, 10:20 pm
Edited because I decided it was kind of worded wrong, 10:35 pm
Edited because I'm drunker now and fuck you. 10:50 pm
Edited because I woke up and felt guilty, 11:00 am
Deleted because I'm so hungover 12:00 pm
Even if it's entertaining, it's a lot of noise.
posted by mygothlaundry at 11:38 AM on December 4, 2005

Editing comments: bad. Editing posts: potentially good. Maybe.
posted by scarabic at 11:43 AM on December 4, 2005

it's important in dangerous places like this that anyone be able to know exactly how much of a moron everyone else is at any given time. own your mistakes.
posted by carsonb at 11:45 AM on December 4, 2005

Terrible idea. Own your mistakes. If you can't stand being represented by misspelled words or bad grammar, preview several times.
posted by languagehat at 11:47 AM on December 4, 2005

a more robust spell checker would be nice.

More attention to *spelling* would be nice. It's not that difficult ;)

Allowing people to go back and edit their comments, and then allowing everyone else to see those edits ... if you think the 'he said she said' Metatalk call-outs are bad now, just think what they could become if there are mutiple versions of each contested comment.

On the other hand, there might be some people who would enjoy this ...
posted by carter at 11:48 AM on December 4, 2005

here's an idea, tell me whatcha think: we could spin off metatalk, add this feature, and promote the beast as the internet's WWE. 4. Profit!
posted by carsonb at 11:55 AM on December 4, 2005

Compulsory spellcheck perhaps? (I would hate that though)
I guess it all means take a step away and a deep breath before posting.
And yes, I'd be against editing ability.
Mop up of FPP carelessness can be made via emailing jessamyn/mathowie.
posted by peacay at 11:56 AM on December 4, 2005

Looks like someone's gonna be disappointed on christmas morning.
posted by crunchland at 11:59 AM on December 4, 2005

How about free all you can edit from posttime until a minute or so after? Just enough to catch errors on postview and not enough to do a complete rewrite or have a major change of heart in most cases.
posted by moift at 12:02 PM on December 4, 2005

Actually, I see no reason why posts shouldn't be amendable. Comments are a completely different kettle of tomatoes.
posted by MrMustard at 12:04 PM on December 4, 2005

It would indeed be a bad idea to allow ongoing revisions, but what about that odd vanity case that is willing to pay some nominal amount to clarify without changing the substance of the comment?

It would make for a better product for the consumer.

The standard could be like that for some journalistic interviews, or even court depositions, where one has the opportunity to correct mistakes but not change content.
posted by StickyCarpet at 12:07 PM on December 4, 2005

How about free all you can edit from posttime until a minute or so after?

...or until someone comments? It seems to me that this is exactly what preview is supposed to be for. I know that in real life there is a difference between seeing something in preview and seeing it live on the page, but honestly, there is preview and live preview already for this sort of thing. I'd love to see a better spellchecker, but I think allowing people to edit comments is going to go badly. As it stands mathowie or I can fix really egregious typos in FPPs or comments if people ask us, and I only do this maybe once every other week.
posted by jessamyn at 12:09 PM on December 4, 2005

Recently discussed here.

Editing comments really strikes me as a terrible idea. As for posts, its seems to me that if you're going to take the time to post, you should take the time to get it right.

That said, I'm as anal about grammar as the next pedant, yet I still make mistakes; even after spell-checking and live preview. A really egregious error on the front page that confuses intent or meaning should probably be edited.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 12:23 PM on December 4, 2005

YIPES!! I meant to link to the thread, not my comment, which is how i found the discussion. Linking to my own comment seems a tad egocentric.

Man, I frikken wish I could edit that.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 12:26 PM on December 4, 2005

In my world: anything post-breakingly bad should be emailed as a request to mathowie or jessamyn. Anything that doesn't seem worth that effort isn't.

What I like about my world is it's really simple and, furthermore, works.

Any scheme to easy the editing of posted content by users will be abused.
posted by cortex at 12:27 PM on December 4, 2005

cortex: Any scheme to ease the editing of posted content by users will be abused.

Got your back, buddy!
posted by StickyCarpet at 12:34 PM on December 4, 2005

Looks like someone's gonna be disappointed on christmas morning.
posted by crunchland at 11:59 AM PST on December 4 [!]

Waaaah!

I guess it is just me then. Time and time again I preview and then post only to catch something wrong. I'm a terrible speller, and apparently my brain outpaces my ability to write a coherent sentence. Spell check doesn't catch homonyms (bear when I mean to write bare) and it doesn't help on proper names (check my last two FPPs.)

The other forum I contribute to regularly allows me to go back and edit and I think it works out swell. But I guess I am in the minority.

What about my other idea? [Quote] [/Quote]?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 12:44 PM on December 4, 2005

A blockquote button like the b/i/link buttons? Or something meatier?
posted by If I Had An Anus at 12:50 PM on December 4, 2005

A button would be fine. Enabling html even. I just want a way to set off quotes other than by using italics.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 1:11 PM on December 4, 2005

Some people use <BLOCKQUOTE> in addition to italics, SLoG.
posted by Gator at 1:18 PM on December 4, 2005

I'd like that MetaChat function quonsar mentioned to be introduced here.
posted by nthdegx at 1:21 PM on December 4, 2005

You can do some very funny things to adjacent posters by editing your posts, and very nasty things, as well. People may assume you're only correcting grammar or information, but you can change the whole sense of the comment to make others look foolish. Don't correct your typos, Gravy, unless it's pertinent info. We can figure it out.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 1:33 PM on December 4, 2005

It's not just you, SLoG. This has been requested countless times, but no one has ever managed to convince Matt. On the other hand, I think people are too uptight about their own grammatical and semantic errors. Any other errors (like a munged link in a front page post) are quickly fixed by the capable and vigilant admins when they're sent an email.

On my own forum, I banned message editing for awhile because people abused it, but deleting the content of their messages, screwing up conversations, but eventually, I put it back when the abusers learned their lesson. But then, there's not as much chaos nor as many asshats there.
posted by crunchland at 1:57 PM on December 4, 2005

http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/10548

The first rule of Metafilter is that any step which brings Metafilter closer to other similar websites which function smoothly is frowned upon.
posted by fire&wings at 4:05 PM on December 4, 2005

If we allow posts to be editing there will be some people that start ever comment by quoting the post, to ensure historic accuracy.
posted by blue_beetle at 5:00 PM on December 4, 2005

I would like to be able to fix some links in archived posts that are now broken or that moved to new URLs.
posted by madamjujujive at 5:54 PM on December 4, 2005

Editing posts after comments have been made is potentially confusing. How about a 300 second lag before things hit the FP? Alternatively, you could implement a version history a la Wikipedia.
posted by Eideteker at 6:29 PM on December 4, 2005

You could just pretend that you'd hit 'post comment,' and then you could correct the mistakes as they appeared in the comment box and/or live preview.
posted by carter at 8:45 PM on December 4, 2005

I would like to be able to fix some links in archived posts that are now broken or that moved to new URLs.

And I would like to change all the links in my archived posts to a certain giant gaping famous anus!

Bad idea.

Ditto editing your comments. I'm pretty sure I don't have the willpower to avoid abusing that, but more than that I'm really, really sure that a lot of other people around here don't either.

The last thing Metafilter needs is to complete its devolution into yet another UBB forum populated by Apple idolators and flambouyant web designers.
posted by Ryvar at 10:12 PM on December 4, 2005

Allowing the retrospective changing of links/text would make the archives a link-whore's wet-dream. Self-links are easy to pick up as they occur, but a month or two into the future, Mr SEO just comes back to a harmless banal post/comment and stocks it with google-chum... Bad.
posted by benzo8 at 2:18 AM on December 5, 2005

I can't belive the number of people that wish MetaFilter was run on phpBB. Unbelievable.
posted by geekyguy at 7:16 AM on December 5, 2005

I would like to be able to fix some links in archived posts that are now broken or that moved to new URLs.

This would actually be a good community project. Identify broken urls and find an archive or cache or it, then email the new link to matt/jess (or have the post amended to reflect the dead url).
posted by amberglow at 7:19 AM on December 5, 2005

for quote blocks i guess you can use <blockquote>

for quote blocks i guess you can use <blockquote>

if that's what you meant?
posted by andrew cooke at 7:36 AM on December 5, 2005

oh, i guess maybe you meant bulletin board style "foo said:" - i think one of the javascript/firefox things does that (metafilthy?). i also think it's a conscious design decision not to have it, but can't recall where matt said that.
posted by andrew cooke at 7:38 AM on December 5, 2005

I can't belive the number of people that wish MetaFilter was run on phpBB. Unbelievable.

Sad, isn't it? This is what happens when you open registration.
posted by Ryvar at 7:45 AM on December 5, 2005

I had no idea bulletin board snobbery even existed.
posted by crunchland at 8:14 AM on December 5, 2005

well, it used to only happen in the gated communities.
posted by carsonb at 8:23 AM on December 5, 2005

I had no idea bulletin board snobbery even existed.

The funny part is that Secret Life of Gravy joined the month after Ryvar.
posted by eddydamascene at 8:24 AM on December 5, 2005

oh, i guess maybe you meant bulletin board style

I don't know what "bulletin board style" means (I'd like to pretend that I know what it means thereby seeming to be much smarter/cooler than I am-- but alas! I'm too schtupid to fake it) but I mean the little boxed-off quote. Metachat has this as do other sites which I visit. If this is uncool/AOL/babyish just ignore me.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 8:28 AM on December 5, 2005

I had no idea bulletin board snobbery even existed.

"NIMBBS"

An argument: a good forum stands on the strength of its content. We don't have avatars, we don't have post-editing, we don't have signatures or automatic block-quotes or a proliferation of emoticons and animated-gif supra-emoticons, and yet Mefi functions and grows. Why, then, would we want to homogenize and bloat the Mefi interface? To what purpose?

What is popular on every goddam clone BB site out there is not necessarily good for here. It's not an indictment of those features in any fundamental sense; it's just an indictment of the call for their addition to a site that works quite well on it's own. People can learn to make their own quotes. They can learn to preview their posts more carefully. They can learn to write very basic html. These are all achievable goals, and mefites have been managing them very well for six years now.

In my case, it's not snobbery for snobbery's sake -- I enjoy a variety of different communiations channels on the net, all for their own distinct features. I don't want to see signficant changes to the Mefi posting interface simply because it is the Mefi posting interface, and by god it works and by it's difference from every pHpBB site out there stands out as being Metafilter.
posted by cortex at 8:33 AM on December 5, 2005

Thanks, cortex, for summing up what I was too lazy to, better than I probably could.

The funny part is that Secret Life of Gravy joined the month after Ryvar.

That being the joke, yes.
posted by Ryvar at 9:07 AM on December 5, 2005

but I mean the little boxed-off quote.

Boxed-off quotes are fine for this snob, by the way, since they help cleanly delineate responses. It's just things like avatars, sigs, terrible interfaces, and the ability to edit your posts and comments all serve to hamper communication, not help it. They result in an interface that is the worst of all worlds: simultaneously Fisher Price, cluttered, and easily abused. Every forum with a high S/N ratio - or at least a mean IQ above room temperature - that I've been to tends to reject those 'friendly' UBB and phpBB features.

I honestly prefer a threaded model too, for whatever its worth, but it wouldn't be appropriate to Metafilter - although breaking up the comments into subpages with a block of 50 each would be nice (hint hint Matt pony for Xmas hint hint).
posted by Ryvar at 9:20 AM on December 5, 2005

[i]That being the joke, yes.[/i]

I don't get jokes.
posted by eddydamascene at 10:06 AM on December 5, 2005

gravy: if you edit your post, I insist that you edit all my replies to your post to conform to what I would have posted if I had seen your edited post instead of the original.

Thanks.
posted by ikkyu2 at 8:15 PM on December 5, 2005

I don't want to see signficant changes to the Mefi posting interface simply because it is the Mefi posting interface, and by god it works and by it's difference from every pHpBB site out there stands out as being Metafilter.
posted by cortex at 8:33 AM PST on December 5 [!]

It is not like there haven't been any changes, the flags and tags are new.

gravy: if you edit your post, I insist that you edit all my replies to your post to conform to what I would have posted if I had seen your edited post instead of the original.

Right. Because changing a "the" to a "that" and a "recieve" to a "receive" will change the entire meaning.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 8:15 AM on December 6, 2005

Well, what if I insulted your spelling as part of my "argument"? I'd look even stupider than I already do if you corrected the spelling error.
posted by ikkyu2 at 8:21 AM on December 6, 2005

It is not like there haven't been any changes, the flags and tags are new.

Granted; I realize that my position hinges on a subjective sense of what is and is not a fundamental change, but that's the thing: I see neither tags nor flags as a fundamental change. Neither the addition of post-titles to the blue and the green, or RSS feeds, or the sidebar on the front page. I care more or less about any one of those, but don't take issue with them regardless of how useful I personally find them

I think the things I am most resistant to, the things that make me wince most severly when I hear them suggested (or implemented ad hoc by a new user), are the features that would alter the basic process of comment-creation, of conversing on the site. Threaded discussion, sigs, avatars, effortless (read: lazy, overzealous) auto-quoting**, post-editing: all of these would lead to a fundamental shift in the way Mefi is used, and in my eyes none would improve this particular site.

So, yeah. Incremental additions of site features and functionality I can get behind; those seem only to add a little (or a lot -- see AskMe) to what Metafilter can do. I just loathe the idea of interface change/bloat that would shift what Metafilter is.

** Here's an interesting development: the lack of mefi-supplied auto-quoting has lead a few creative users to create custom solutions -- greasemonkey scripts, Metafilthy, whatever else -- that provide the desired functionality. As a result, folks who want this feature have to go a little out of their way to get it, which means the only folks using it are the ones who see that as being worth the effort. I would argue that it's a direct result of this "difficulty factor" that we don't see massive, stupid full-comment quotes: the people using these tools are discerning enough, by virtue of having the wherewithal to locate (or write!) the needed tools, to not use the tools in ridiculous/lazy/irresponsible ways. As a result, Mefi has autoquoting for (at least a portion, hopefully growing, of) the folks who want it, and quoting has not turned into a great big ugly phpbb/slashdot/etc mess that it might were it available with no effort to new users accustomed to the conventions of other, more quote-happy sites.
posted by cortex at 8:51 AM on December 6, 2005

Right. Because changing a "the" to a "that" and a "recieve" to a "receive" will change the entire meaning.

You can't possibly think that if people here were given this capacity, that's all they would use it for.
posted by languagehat at 10:03 AM on December 6, 2005