User Permissions

[Wildcat]

On some forums I've set up, I've had a very small editing window for conversations (a matter of minutes), mainly to correct stray spelling errors and such. Although I fully agree that it could be an opening for abuse, even in our limited setting.

At least with posts, though, the forum stores everything in a post history, so even if a member pulled something, staff still catches it eventually.

 

[Mystic]

Though I know it's not an issue with you, Frannie, there have been several pissing contests, over buy&sell, where edited conversations would be a nightmare. So, once they are sent, that will be it. One can follow up, with a correction, and it would be part of the conversation thread. No disputing the contents, that way.
Sad that it comes to this, but editable conversations were not a 'go'.

Sadly Ernie is right. We intended to make them editable, but then, when we were dragged in the middle of a dispute we could not get the full story. Sadly it has to stay the way it is.

Grumpy

"Tis the way of things. My "conversation" colleagues will learn to endure the seemingly boundless torrent of tpyos I (too) often inflict @ our "conversations".

BTW, the site is looking great and (for me) workin' like a charm, and never slow @ loading pages, etc. We gotz good stuff here.

 

[buglegirl]

On some forums I've set up, I've had a very small editing window for conversations (a matter of minutes), mainly to correct stray spelling errors and such. Although I fully agree that it could be an opening for abuse, even in our limited setting.

At least with posts, though, the forum stores everything in a post history, so even if a member pulled something, staff still catches it eventually.

I am still not understanding what the abuse would be ??

People editing offers after the fact ??

Maybe I am a stupid trusting person but I do consider even a typed private conversation to be a extension of "My Word Is My Bond"

Frannie

 

[mech986]

He said, they said, no, it's different when the admins look at the conversation traffic. because the edits show up as having happened and the actual original text is gone, Then there is no confirmation of the original conversation. Even emails sent or forwarded can be edited before sending.

Perhaps what makes this more problematic is that the combatants drag AK admins into it.. But then reading feedback threads gives us only the tip of the iceberg. The escalated issues must be horrendous.

 

[Wildcat]

I am still not understanding what the abuse would be ??

People editing offers after the fact ??

Maybe I am a stupid trusting person but I do consider even a typed private conversation to be a extension of "My Word Is My Bond"

Frannie

Trusting yes but stupid? Never. I always liked to give members the benefit of the doubt, but I can't tell you how many times my trusting side has been bit in the ass over the years.

But when someone has been in the game as long as I have (I date back to being a sysop on Compuserve, before the web became popular), let's just say I've seen everything.

In a forum post, a couple of things can happen. I had forums where editing was something you could turn on, or off...no time restriction when it was on. I had a couple of members come along and decide they didn't want an account anymore, so they'd go and edit every single post, emptying it completely. So it ruined dozens of threads. With a time limit, that prevents someone from doing that after the fact. (But now, with the edit history and the ability to restore any version of a post with a single click, it's an annoyance that can be recovered from...it just creates a huge amount of unnecessary work for the staffer who has to do it.)

And there are cases I have in a larger forum where one member will take a shot at another, leave it up for 14 minutes, then edit out the nastiness before our 15 minute time limit elapses, knowing the target member of the abuse has read it (as we often get the report). Many don't realize we have an edit history and can read every version of the post. Yet they think they can get away with it.

In conversations, I'm torn. I like being able to clean up my sloppy typing, but on the other hand, having that message "set in stone" to avoid abuse is almost a necessity for the few that might abuse it.

We'd all like to leave unlimited editing and deletion abilities intact, but those 0.1% of users ruin it for 99.9% of the others. Lessons learned, I guess.

 

[theophile]

What happens if a member quotes a previous post in his new post. Does that quoted post within the new post get deleted if the previous poster decides to delete the original post?

I will often quote a post simply in order that the member who posted the original post I posted cannot alter their post without there being a record of it as it originally stood.

 

[mech986]

AFAIK, captured quoted posts stick even if the original post is deleted or .........

 

[ETLS]

AFAIK, captured quoted posts stick even if the original post is deleted or edited.

Heck, we could try that out.

 

[luvvinvinyl]

It does remain, even to the original name of the poster, if the name has been changed.