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golinux

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 3,336  

Re: Unable to edit any of my own posts

Oooooo such big words and proclamations.  Please get over yourself.

(golinux yawns . . .)

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blackhole

Member

Registered: 2020-03-16

Posts: 108  

Re: Unable to edit any of my own posts

Again, your penchant towards secrecy and authoritarianism seem contrary to the stated goals of Devuan being about freedom.

This and some of your other comments, come across as very "forum social justice warrior".  You can argue endlessly over how a forum is administered, but when all is said and done - they "administer" and you do not.  Far from being about "freedom and democracy", most web forums are in fact "dictatorships", operated by individuals, or groups who will tolerate your presence as long as they have to - but they don't have to, nor do they have to make any changes to policy to suit your own personal preferences.  For the latter, you rent some hosting, buy a domain and do your own thing - with yourself established as dictator.

Free software projects are very similar, in that those who write the code and/or pay the bills, get to be involved in the decision making - users are "along for the ride" and get to use the results for free.  That's how pretty much all free software works.

Anyway... without a post edit/revision history feature (a la vBulletin), I think it's reasonable to establish a time limit, but I really don't see the case for any secrecy.  I would also second the suggestion of removal of the delete button altogether.

24 hours seems the most reasonable amount of time for edits.  It will greatly reduce the kind of impact from a disgruntled member "vandalisng" things, but without restricting members from making reasonable edits.

In my opinion, it is better to state it clearly - and not base any policy on theoretical trolls "gaming" the system.  I would add that any policy based on trolls, or "countermeasures", which are aimed at troublemakers, but which affect and perhaps alienate the majority of ordinary/decent forums users are not good policies.

0.02

Vernon

Member

Registered: 2020-07-19

Posts: 89  

Re: Unable to edit any of my own posts

You can argue endlessly over how a forum is administered, but when all is said and done - they "administer" and you do not.  Far from being about "freedom and democracy", most web forums are in fact "dictatorships", operated by individuals, or groups who will tolerate your presence as long as they have want to - but they don't have to, nor do they have to make any changes to policy to suit your own personal preferences.

I agree with this statement wholeheartedly and have not stated anything contrary. However, just as the forum administrators have the right to administer their forum the way they want, I have the right to continue to highlight how making secret editing policy changes which were not asked for by the community are not consistent with their stated goals of Freedom and a  Community driven forum - at least as long as the site administrators give me that right.

...
Anyway... without a post edit/revision history feature (a la vBulletin), I think it's reasonable to establish a time limit, but I really don't see the case for any secrecy.  I would also second the suggestion of removal of the delete button altogether.

I think removal of the delete button is a reasonable compromise as long as unlimited time limits for edits were restored. Posters could still remove the contents of their posts via edit leaving an empty post.

24 hours seems the most reasonable amount of time for edits.

Well here we disagree. 24 hours is not enough time for a poster to mark an issue solved nor is it enough time for me, at least to complete my posts and correct all my typos and grammatical errors.

It will greatly reduce the kind of impact from a disgruntled member "vandalisng" things, but without restricting members from making reasonable edits.

What do you mean by vandalizing? Is a poster, regretting some pejorative comment and deleting the contents of their post considered vandalizing by you? Please be specific.

In my opinion, it is better to state it clearly - and not base any policy on theoretical trolls "gaming" the system.  I would add that any policy based on trolls, or "countermeasures", which are aimed at troublemakers, but which affect and perhaps alienate the majority of ordinary/decent forums users are not good policies.

0.02

Agree

Based on the response of the Manjaro community to their administrators losing many of their posts due to no backups and then instituting radical Forum changes, the critical and direct responses to the Devuan Forum administrators instituting secret policy changes should not have been unexpected.

Last edited by Vernon (2020-09-23 16:42:32)

blackhole

Member

Registered: 2020-03-16

Posts: 108  

Re: Unable to edit any of my own posts

What do you mean by vandalizing? Is a poster, regretting some pejorative comment and deleting the contents of their post considered vandalizing by you? Please be specific.

No, "vandalising" as in someone who goes through and systematically clears out all of their posting history.

Vernon

Member

Registered: 2020-07-19

Posts: 89  

Re: Unable to edit any of my own posts

What do you mean by vandalizing? Is a poster, regretting some pejorative comment and deleting the contents of their post considered vandalizing by you? Please be specific.

No, "vandalising" as in someone who goes through and systematically clears out all of their posting history.

Thanks for your clarification.

By removing, as you suggested the Delete button, a poster, assuming editing without time limits are restored,  would only have the ability to remove the post contents leaving an empty post. If the previous contents of the empty post were not already quoted in a reply, a Devuan forum visitor could simply paste the thread URL into archive.org if they were curious about the previous post contents.

If archive.org does not contain the thread, this means that no Devuan forum user thought the post valuable enough to take a few seconds and archive the post at
https://web.archive.org/save

A sticky post could be made notifying forum users that post authors have the ability to modify or delete the contents of posts at any time and if they feel that the post is valuable as-is and should be preserved, they should take a couple of seconds and submit the URL to
https://web.archive.org/save

This preserves the the ability of posters to Edit and delete the contents of posts at any time and allows the Devuan community and even casual visitors of the Devuan forum to determine which posts are valuable enough to preserve for posterity.

This also adheres to the Devuan administrators stated goals of

• A community driven forum

• Freedom

• No additional Forum administrative tasks

Does this address your concern about a forum member deleting all their posts depriving other forum members of content potentially useful to Devuan users?

Last edited by Vernon (2020-09-24 16:37:33)

golinux

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 3,336  

Re: Unable to edit any of my own posts

All things are impermanent.  It is a fool's task to cling to anything much less ephemeral data.  The knowledge collected here quickly becomes outdated and moves to the bottom of the list.  Seems like this thread is much ado about . . . well, nothing really . . .  If we ever get a workable wiki, that is an entirely different medium with more lasting power.

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blackhole

Member

Registered: 2020-03-16

Posts: 108  

Re: Unable to edit any of my own posts

Does this address your concern about a forum member deleting all their posts depriving other forum members of content potentially useful to Devuan users?

I don't have that specific concern.  It was head on a stick who used the term "vandalise" and I borrowed that term as it seemed quite apt.

The point was brought up by golinux in post #3 and in later posts.

I have no dog in this race, but I'm struggling to see how archive.org is the answer for a number of reasons, but mainly that it's proposing a third party as a solution to a problem, which didn't seem like much of a problem in the first place - and "make your own backups of threads [in case someone goes on a deleting spree]", just doesn't seem like a good solution or policy in any case.

If this were a mailing list, you'd have to make your contributions and stick to them - rather than editing and changing things around at later dates - it would also be a problem for those prone to such tantrums that they feel the need to remove all of their content.  If it were a "wiki" - and it's not - there would be an edit history and a whole set of tools suitable for writing guides/articles/instructions.

This is why I suggested 24 hours - as far as I'm concerned that's more than enough to correct grammatical or factual errors and if not, then if you need to change something at a later date, you would surely post an addendum in the form of a new post?  This would immediately bump the thread as well and draw attention to new content/updates being made.

Last edited by blackhole (2020-09-25 15:23:13)