Hoping for the return of the latter day edit feature and beautifying

[James]

I vaguely remember that way back when you could edit your posts for quite some time after you posted. I personally would like to go back and revise some of my posts for the followin reasons. 1) to remove evidence of stupidy and/or insanity. 2) to change the fomatting tags to be in BB code (rather than HTML or whatever.) 3) to update information that is now wrong 4) spelling 5) to split and clarify muddy ideas. I don't suppose there could be a old post deuglificiaton task.

[festergrump]

You've been around for seemingly ever, James, so surely you remember that one of the reasons (and a good one, at that) posts can only be editted for so long is that people cannot take back anything they might have said simply because they got a new GF or whatever who might not approve of their previous opinions and such, or get pissed at the staff for whatever reason and remove their posts (like taking your "ball" and going home like a baby).

The edit feature is a nice feature to have to be able to correct grammatical errors, typos, and some brainfarts, but basically the real safeties are the SUBMIT REPLY button and PREVIEW POST button.

Aside from that, disallowing the EDIT button beyond a reasonable time prevents something called "baiting".

Baiting is when one or more people lure a member into a heated discussion with words chosen to prompt the member into a flamewar, then they edit their own posts to look innocent, hoping to get the member banned or flamed beyond reasonable retort. I've seen this happen on many other boards but never this one.

Maybe Mega could extend the time alotted for post editting, but I personally don't feel it should be any more than a few minutes.

I tend to write my posts out in Notepad first and copy/paste them in and preview them first for errors or broken links. That seems to work well for me, although the mistakes do sometimes evade me...

[megalomania]

I am still testing the new edit features, but I only changed the edit time from several hours to 15 minutes. Why this particular time frame? Because it's the same time I personally use to edit my posts if I need to, and what's good for the goose...

1) Evidence of stupidity and insanity usually gets the user removed, which is good reason to keep the evidence around.

2) I am not sure what you mean by formating in BB tags since they are already used. Unless you mean the very old posts that are formatted as HTML, in which case I still need to run a batch query, but I don't want to do that until I am damn sure I know what I am doing first. I have never run such a query because the potential to screw up or adversely alter the entire Forum is very high, hence my reluctance.

3) This I will grant you I need to work on. However, the big update changed so much I have a ton of such things to find and fix. I am getting these things taken care of one by one, but a lot of my work on the site is behind the scenes, under the hood type work few ever see or notice.

4) That's nothing I can fix, technically. We will never have perfect spellers, no matter what rules The Forum may have. Unless you mean there are spelling errors in The Forum proper that I have written?

5) I am not sure what you mean by this one.

For me, the thought of going through thousands of old posts and cleaning them up is onerous. Not just because of the tedium, but because of the risk of accidentally editing away valuable knowledge. I have done a lot of work with batch queries and regular expressions the last couple of months, but I still have a lot to learn before really trusting what I am doing on the live board.

I swear some uber-nerd wrote the language of regular expressions to impress other nerds with its obscurity and vagueness. Heaven's forbid they make some commands in plain English. I have been trying out PowerGREP with Regex Buddy (look em up), but there is still a learning curve to conquer.

Keep in mind I am also responsible for keeping the rest of the Rogue Science website going, not just The Forum. I spent a lot of time working on The Forum up to the summer, and I spent much of my time during the summer working on Rogue Science. I tend to work more effectively by focusing my efforts on narrow range of interrelated projects. I will get back to The Forum soon enough.

Perhaps my perspective of the site is a little different than most people. I have been doing this for 11 years now, so to me the long term goals are the most important. There are things I have to do now to guide and shape the direction of the site years down the road. Some things are quick easy fixes, and some things require a lot of thought and deliberation before I act to save me a lot of trouble and work down the road. A few months going by with something needing fixed is not that big of a deal in comparison to the big picture.

[James]

my comments on megalomanias comments on my comments.
1) You have yet to kick me out. (despite the fact I am probably subliterate (I can be self critical), stupid (ditto) and insane (I have 12 sane friends and am compensating for them)
2) I and several other member have old posts w/ HTML tags rather than BB ones.
3) you pretty much covered it.
4) I know no one is perfect. We just need to start using spell & grammar check (spell check doesn't catch if you spell the wrong word the right way etc.) for our local English (British English demands more Us etc.)
5) I crank out some Ideas you have to be crazy and/or stupid to understand and they're really need translated so regular forumites can understand them.
I suppose someone who was a better programmer than me could write a script/program thast would incrementally change HTML in post to BB code and display the output of rendering the befores and afters. I don't know how the internals would work though.
To festergrump, good points. I vaguely recall that a former member had a fit and deleted all their posts, IIRC NBK was really ticked. I don't recall any instances of baiting, but usually I'm lucky if I can remember yesterday well.
Generally: I suppose things will remain the same while evil inhabits the hearts of men (the race not the gender).

[totenkov]

I crank out some Ideas you have to be crazy and/or stupid to understand

Generally, I don't like it when I hear this. You have dangerously placed yourself in the "hazard to self and others" section. Based on your previous posts I would be very careful asking that the forum is rearranged for your own sake. I have never had any problems posting, spell checking and previewing my posts, neither should you.

Then I found this, truly astonishing and mystifying:

they're really need translated so regular forumites can understand them.

Exactly what the fuck does this mean? Are you stating that some of your "ideas" are so profound and revolutionary that you cannot get your ideas across in the simple English? :eek: Your spelling is appalling, it looks like you have been off your meds for the recommended amount of time, what has been the point of your post? Kicking and screaming about how the forums bare posting options have been laid out? You may have been around since 2001, but that is absolutely no excuse to post this kind of garble......dodging mods since 2001 indeed. :rolleyes:

[Kaydon]

If only there was a way to grant certain members more time than others.

Meh, I haven't had any issues with editing. I usually type up my replies in Word and then copy/paste. It does the spell checking for you.

Since most forums use BBcode, I see no reason why one would use HTML.

[Alexires]

You have already been warned by myself about the need for you to clean up your posts and make them relevant, James.

You need to take a two week break and clean up your shit. You haven't been dodging mods, you have been here by the grace of God....and all grace runs out eventually.

[fluoroantimonic]

The reason I would like to have a longer edit time is to update posts. Every once in a while I have mistakes to fix too. Mainly it occurs when I'm actively researching something, I'll make a post about something I found, then a few hours or days later find out more or different information. At the moment I have to double post, which I try to avoid, but sometimes it seems unavoidable. Is double posting really a bad thing if the information is useful?

[megalomania]

The problem with editing a post a few days later is that many people may not see it. The new posts search only displays new added posts, but there is no option to identify if a post has been changed other than the "edited by" stamp that gets added. If you have already read the post a few days back, and there are several posts after that, you may never notice that a post changed.

It is for this reason that a limit is imposed on editing posts. Amended information should always be added as a new post to insure all people can see it.

[Alexires]

fluoroantimonic - We understand your concerns but as Mega has said, the limited edit function serves a purpose. I don't think (not a chance in hell) that it will be extended to such a large time frame.

Also, I know that the other moderators and myself wont ban you for double posting if your second post is a few hours or more after your original post. Give us more credit than that, we know what it is like to find information relevant a few hours after you have posted.