Concerning the editing post policy

[Unknown_K]

The editing policy is a bandaide for other issues. If people go too far in posting things not appropriate to the forum then maybe they should get a warning and if they continue then get kicked out (same with the IRC channels).

Some people like to push things and if there is nobody pushing back they continue to do what they like.

All you get when you say "if you don't like it get the hell out" is a forum full of troublemakers when the others decide to do just that and leave.

 

[Flash!]

Look, I know that this is not a democracy....but the fact is that a few people have raised some very good points, and the admins have not. It's bullshit and it stinks.

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[equill]

One person 'owns' the URL and the responsibility for legality and decorum at this site. A handful of people administer and moderate the site. Several hundred other people create the Forum by their contributions and posts. Without these latter there is only a URL, but there is no Forum. I am not inside ~tl's head, but I find it difficult to believe that his intention was for a forum of half-a-dozen contributors.

The catalyst for this thread is puzzling. The change in 'rule'—no matter how minuscule or maximal posters may find its effect to be—is difficult to understand without adequate explanation for its introduction.

If another post has intervened between a first post and its edit, there is already a flag that the post has been edited. If the original text must be preserved as a consequence of some present threat to the Forum's owner, It cannot be swingeingly difficult to arrange that both original and edited text be displayed in red or purple text, or in 'strikethrough' and underline à la MS Word, or whatever, making it more obvious that the original has been changed. None of us should have any difficulty in co-operating to preserve this Forum against external threat. If the catalyst for the rule-change were of lesser magnitude, such as maintenance of decorum, most of us would probably be able to digest and comply with that. To be fobbed-off with a fiat and weak non-explanations has been the burr under the saddle for almost all of the preceding posts. Knowing compliance will be more effective than seemingly capricious imposition as a tool for good order in this Forum, even if governments have yet to absorb that kind of thought.

de

 

[Flash!]

It's not the change in rules per se that pisses me off - it's the lack of communication about it.

The Forum Rules, if you bother to read them, are complete bullshit anyway. This place is not the place it is because of "the rules", it's all the great people that come here and a crapload of mutual respect.

Something changed, a few people respectfully asked if that something could be changed back, and so far those people have been shat on by admin.

If admin would like to change the rules willy nilly, as is apparently their right in this non-democratic forum, then the least they could do is show a teensie eensie little bit of respect

edit: typo

 

[tyrannis]

Forgive my ignorance, but I suppose phpBB does not present an option to the moderators to allow edits in perpetuity, but protect the original text? Is it possible to allow the insertion of new text only, leaving the rest of the post untouched? (EDIT: I know you're expecting new text to come in the form of a new post, but the goal here is to preserve the Trading Post's value to the membership, right?)

Alternatively, would it be possible to compromise here and allowing editing, but firmly require that all editing be preceded by an "EDIT:" prompt, leaving original text intact? Surely it would be possible to affect the privileges of users that disregard such a requirement.

 

[Green78II]

If people are following a thread, and someone edits their post, The people already following the thread can point out that the person has changed their post, along with the tag at the bottom of the post that says "this message has been edited by x (poster)at x (time)". I know several forums that have problems with flame wars and such, but the person in the wrong is always exposed by the edit tags and by anyone following the thread.

As for changing major things that might negatively affect the majority of the people without telling them first, this is the only forum site I know that has ever done that. Also, i know a forum (not mac related) that is so lenient, and the members are so civil, the only thing the moderators ever need to do is remove spam, and that was the reason they were put in place to start with.

Also, I too, would like to see a reference to a thread where a person changing their post caused any serious problems. I've never seen a single thread/post on any forum site I've read/posted on where it wasn't blatantly obvious that someone was trying to save face by editing their post.

Plus, as posted several times before in this thread, and I believe the other, Isn't there a way to save the original text and show where the edits are?

 

[wthww]

Quite honestly, I rarely post, and usually lurk on the forums here. I'm quite active in the irc, but thats another thing. Lets put this into perspective. You all are arguing on the internet. I dont need to repeat the old adage about arguing on the internet, let alone arguing on a 68k mac enthusiast forum. This thread is obnoxious in three ways. 1), it really shows no respect for the mods. In the real world, 90% of the things a government does it does in secret. The public gets very little say, never finds out, in the end it all works out for the better and tough luck if they do find out and it was wrong. 2) It really isnt that big of a deal. 3) If you wanted to argue about something, you could argue about something halfway useful and thats related to what we do here, like how the forum system is no longer viewable on a 68k mac.

Where does this assumption that we the people run the forum and the site would just fall apart if a choice few left? To some extent the place exists as a community, but the way its all held together is a forum, and everyone cant be a mod at once. The ones who are mods do their best, and do a damn good job. It seems soon as a mod or an admin exercises their authority people get all bent out of shape over something retarded like this. What is this, a rallying call against the MLA? by the "MLA"? I find it quite hilarious the the majority of the MLA userbase didnt even notice, but the same people who always make a stink find it as bad as murdering babies and then using them to paint their house.

Grow up people. You cant always have everything your way, and its not like anything has really changed. Your mods didnt change, your people didnt change, the MLA didnt change, the way the forum system works changed. Thats all. If you cant handle a small and quite insignificant change such as this, then please, dont come back. We dont need that in the community. It feels as tho its a power struggle that needs not exist.

Anyways, I fear if I continue reading this thread or posting in it I'll loose a few more IQ points than I already have.

//wthww

 

[Mike Richardson]

No forum system is perfect, though many strive for perfection. Members may disagree with aspects of the forum's policies or administration. 68kMLA is no different.

However, at this time, the 68kMLA represents the best possible forum for the discussion of 68K Macintosh computers. Until such time that I am made aware of a better forum, I will embrace and respect the policies of this forum.

All I ask in return is that the 68kMLA continues to strive for perfection.

I apologize for contributing to this mess. Let's put it to a rest guys.

 

[Flash!]

????? 8-o 8-o 8-o

 

[Christopher]

????? 8-o 8-o 8-o

I'm just as confused as you are.

Mike, what are you smoking? Whatever it is, I wan't double.

 

[macgeek417]

Wow, Mike... what happened to you... one day you are ultra-against the edit post policy, today you dont care.

 

[tecneeq]

... that makes membership purging ... necessary to have.

It's normal database maintenance and no reason to be alarmed.

 

[~tl]

I have already stated the reason for limiting edits in the first thread on this topic and I think they've been repeated since, so I won't go in to them. I didn't make an announcement about it at the time because, frankly, I didn't think it was that big of a deal. I guess I may have overlooked the specific requirements of the 'Trading Post' forum when making my assessment. However, aside from that specific case I still can't see many reasons why old posts would need to be edited on a regular basis. Sure, you may notice a spelling/grammar mistake, but that's the reason for the edit period. After this, a PM to one of our friendly moderation staff will (in most cases) get the post edited for you. It may be best to use the "report post" functionality to send a request – as this will be seen by all moderation staff. Of course, with this limitiation the old adage "think before you speak post" becomes more relevant than ever. I personally make good use of the forum's "preview" functionality to read over my posts before I submit them and I encourage everyone else to do the same.

The 'Trading Post' forum is a unique case where the ability to edit posts in retrospect is a worthwhile thing to update listings, etc. Unfortunately, phpBB has an all or nothing approach when it comes to this, so there is no way to enable editing past the limit in only one forum. phpBB also doesn't have any sort of edit versioning/history system which someone mentioned – if it did that would obviously be a preferable solution. While I understand that this is a bit of an inconvenience, all I can ask is that you appreciate why we've brought in this limitation and make the best of it.

As for the membership purges, since someone brought them up, they are necessary to curb the number of spambot "sleeper" accounts* that we have had since the upgrade to phpBB3. Since the reCAPTCHA plug-in we were using before doesn't work with phpBB3, we have had to put up with an increased level of these type of accounts registering. It's a pretty arduous task to go through the new registrations and weed out these one by one (we were getting in the region of 30 a day for a while), so realistically a purge is the only way to do it. Sure, it may catch the odd member who has signed up but hadn't got round to posting, but I'd think that the ratio is pretty low. It does not affect any member who has made at least one post, so shouldn't make a difference to anyone else. I've recently been experimenting with adding some anti-spambot questions to the registration page (as I mentioned here) which seems to have worked nicely – so hopefully in the future I won't have to do these purges quite so often.

Cheers all,

~T

* Accounts that sign up and have links in their profile with the intention of raising their Google PageRank (etc) but never post spam and hence never get noticed.

 

[Mike Richardson]

I still do not like the new policy. However, it is clear that the path I was going down was not the one to a solution.

Tom has stated that if he could change the Trading Post only to allow unlimited retroactive editing, then he would. This would be a fair compromise and I am glad that Tom sees the advantages of unlimited editing in the Trading Post forum.

The following modification lets you set time limits per forum and even per user: http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=69&t=1346435

 

[macgeek417]

I still do not like the new policy. However, it is clear that the path I was going down was not the one to a solution.
Tom has stated that if he could change the Trading Post only to allow unlimited retroactive editing, then he would. This would be a fair compromise and I am glad that Tom sees the advantages of unlimited editing in the Trading Post forum.

The following modification lets you set time limits per forum and even per user: http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=69&t=1346435

Good point... Il change my avatar and sig when i get on the computer that i backuped them to...

 

[~tl]

The following modification lets you set time limits per forum and even per user: http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=69&t=1346435

Unfortunately, due to the fact that installing phpBB's mods requires modification the base code, upgrading the forum becomes a complete hassle. Even with the relatively few updates we had installed back on the phpBB2 forum, each phpBB update took hours to install. I'm a bit reluctant to start installing mods on the forum, since phpBB3 does most of the things we need out of the box.

 

[Mike Richardson]

The following modification lets you set time limits per forum and even per user: http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=69&t=1346435

Unfortunately, due to the fact that installing phpBB's mods requires modification the base code, upgrading the forum becomes a complete hassle. Even with the relatively few updates we had installed back on the phpBB2 forum, each phpBB update took hours to install. I'm a bit reluctant to start installing mods on the forum, since phpBB3 does most of the things we need out of the box.

I'm not familiar with the phpBB code, but there's probably a much simpler mod one could do to open up editing in one forum.

I'm assuming the code to check for the time limitation is something like this:

if (post_time > the_time_limitation)
{
   fail;
} 

The modification could be something like this:

if (post_time > the_time_limitation AND sub_forum != 4)
{
   fail;
} 

The Trading Post is sub-forum #4 here. If my theories are correct, you would need to modify the following three lines of code:

- The line of code controlling the display of the "Edit" button

- The line of code which prohibits the Edit form from displaying

- The line of code which prohibits the actual edit from occurring

I hope you'll keep it in mind. Thanks for your time.

 

[Mike Richardson]

For some reason, the post above has been edited. I had originally included a statement about phpBB's AutoMOD software. Additionally, the psuedo-code snippets were converted to actual CODE blocks.

While I don't mind the psuedo-code modification, I am extremely puzzled as to why my statement concerning AutoMOD was removed.

Perhaps it was a mistake while changing the code blocks. In any case, here is the link to AutoMOD again: http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1428495

Thanks for your time.

 

[~tl]

For some reason, the post above has been edited. I had originally included a statement about phpBB's AutoMOD software. Additionally, the psuedo-code snippets were converted to actual CODE blocks.
While I don't mind the psuedo-code modification, I am extremely puzzled as to why my statement concerning AutoMOD was removed.

Perhaps it was a mistake while changing the code blocks. In any case, here is the link to AutoMOD again: http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1428495

Thanks for your time.

Hmm, I added the code blocks but I didn't touch anything else. Did you add the link to AutoMOD originally or did you edit your post to add it? Maybe we both were editing the post at the same time... sorry if that's the case.

I'll take a look in to AutoMOD.

 

[Flash!]

many hands make light work.....