Modify Post Permissions

[Pete]

I have read the previous thread about Modify Post permissions being limited to 5-minutes, in order to avoid some sort of abuse. As of the past couple of days, I thought it was returned to it's "forever" status, but today, Mark, Steve, and I noticed it's apparently back to the 5-minute limit. My hunch is that when the forum went down a couple of days ago, it was reset when the glitch was corrected. My second hunch is it was not noticed until today, and then it got switched to the 5-minute limit again.

As a long time QB forum owner, I just don't see any benefit in this 5-minute editing limit. I do see tremendous use, without abuse, and benefit to most all of our members by permitting a much longer editing limit, maybe a month for programs and a day for all other boards. It's far better for updating code in the Programs board. It's far better at keeping posts more relevant in all other boards. It helps members avoid embarrassment when they make some typo, or when there is a need to correct or clarify what was posted upon further reflection, which often occurs well past a 5-minute time limit.

At N54 and Tapatalk, I would simply remove or limit permissions just for the member who abused the feature. I'd highly be in favor of taking that approach here, provided it is available on Simple Machines forums. I simply cannot imagine what abuse would be so great and used so frequently it would far outweigh the benefits of longer time limits for editing in the community.

Pete

[bplus]

Hi Pete,

The abuse I've seen is when a member gets really pissed and starts deleting every post he every made or modifying them to  . or Letter when deletions are not allowed.

It really messes up threads and I sympathize with forum administrators having to handle this kind of abuse.

Honor systems so often get ruined by a tiny few. What can you do?

[SpriggsySpriggs]

I agree, Pete. It would cut down on length of threads and help keep things relevant. If we're able to limit specific persons from editing then I'd think how it should be done is perhaps based on how many posts a person has. If they have x amount of posts then they get to edit posts. I don't know how granular the permissions get on SMF.

[SMcNeill]

@bplus — But there’s a “View edits of posts” link for all that type of stuff.  So what if XYZ edits his posts to become blank?  The history is still there so anyone responding to the topic at hand can just say, “Look at XYZ’s post above, at the edit list, before they turned into an idiot.”

[Pete]

@bplus I can only recall one instance of some member threatening to do that. So unimportant to me, I never checked. Besides, I believe deletion is not an option, and probably shouldn't be, and since the view edits link is always present, the post could be viewed again. I suppose the greatest loss to the community is if someone posted a lot of great code, and then essentially edited those posts to complete irrelevance like the dot you mentioned, but again, the view edits feature would make the code accessible again.

My question to you would be this. Do you feel the benefits, to the rest of us, with longer limits on editing, would outweigh or would not outweigh the occasional abuse of this feature?

I mean that member who got pissed would have not been able to remove much, if anything at all, with the limits I mentioned. 5-minutes, especially in the Programs board, is just way too limited for the community, in my opinion and I really feel a better solution should be implemented by the admins.

Pete

[bplus]

@bplus — But there’s a “View edits of posts” link for all that type of stuff.  So what if XYZ edits his posts to become blank?  The history is still there so anyone responding to the topic at hand can just say, “Look at XYZ’s post above, at the edit list, before they turned into an idiot.”

Oh yeah! forgot about that. :) That's not usually available in forums I've been on, that is a nice feature.

[bplus]

Yeah @Pete, as I said to Steve, I forgot about View Edits. It does seem to solve the worst kind of abuse, IMHO.

[Pete]

I agree, Pete. It would cut down on length of threads and help keep things relevant. If we're able to limit specific persons from editing then I'd think how it should be done is perhaps based on how many posts a person has. If they have x amount of posts then they get to edit posts. I don't know how granular the permissions get on SMF.

@SpriggsySpriggs That's another feature I have at Tapatalk forums. I can grant "Group" permissions. By that, I mean if I see a member in good standing, I can place that member in a group that has more privileges. I would imagine something similar is also available here, and would be another useful tool to improve this situation.

Thanks for bringing it up, and BTW, at The QBasic Forum, I limit new members to the Community forum for posting only. I primarily want to keep it as an archive board of QBasic past, so I don't want new members spamming it. I noticed you joined a week or so ago, and I upgraded your posting abilities to the Code and Discussion boards, with editing privileges.

Pete

[SpriggsySpriggs]

@Pete I actually forgot all about joining it. I can't even remember what I was doing and how I got there. I'll have to visit it every once in a while to see what's up

[Pete]

@SpriggsySpriggs Well if you're Catholic, your priest may have recommended the site as some sort of penitence. If worse, you may have been forced to join to complete your hours of community service. No wait, that's our FreeBASIC members. They're primarily Basicists, anyway meaning they don't believe in a higher language. Anyway, stop by from time to time and give me and TheBOB a shout out, oh, except for Monday evenings. That's BINGO night.

Pete

[Cobalt]

@bplus
My question to you would be this. Do you feel the benefits, to the rest of us, with longer limits on editing, would outweigh or would not outweigh the occasional abuse of this feature?

I mean that member who got pissed would have not been able to remove much, if anything at all, with the limits I mentioned. 5-minutes, especially in the Programs board, is just way too limited for the community, in my opinion and I really feel a better solution should be implemented by the admins.

Pete

I think this falls under the age old adage of "One bad apple spoils the bunch."

I agree it causes more strife then it solves, cause though there are times when members have mental health issues but its far less frequent than the rest of the community getting along and cooperating with each other on projects and what-nots.

Alas its not for you, me, Steve, Bplus or Spriggsy to decide unfortunately.

[RhoSigma]

Good luck friends, mentioned some of the agruments discussed here in other threads before, like code updates in the programs board, but the admins (aka Fellippe) seems to be pretty resistant against those arguments.

So what to do? - Pretty simple, I'll limit my code posts here to a minimum, snippets at best, but no longer entire programs or libraries, as long as I'm not able to maintain and keep it up to date. This is of course a pityful decision in a time when much code would need updates due to the lately fixed/changed recursion behavior in QB64 2.0, hence much of my code posted in this forum in the past will no longer work with version 2.0 and up.

When another newcomer then complains, then I'll reply: "I'm sorry, downgrade to stable version 1.5 and it will work." --- Not sure if this is in the sense of continuous development.

[SMcNeill]

Good luck friends, mentioned some of the agruments discussed here in other threads before, like code updates in the programs board, but the admins (aka Fellippe) seems to be pretty resistant against those arguments.

So what to do? - Pretty simple, I'll limit my code posts here to a minimum, snippets at best, but no longer entire programs or libraries, as long as I'm not able to maintain and keep it up to date. This is of course a pityful decision in a time when much code would need updates due to the lately fixed/changed recursion behavior in QB64 2.0, hence much of my code posted in this forum in the past will no longer work with version 2.0 and up.

When another newcomer then complains, then I'll reply: "I'm sorry, downgrade to stable version 1.5 and it will work." --- Not sure if this is in the sense of continuous development.

You’re not alone Rho.  If you’ve noticed, I haven’t really bothered to post much of anything new on the forums for a while now.  When it becomes too hard to edit and correct a post, then it’s getting to the point where it’s too hard to make one to begin with. 

It’s like with my little CodeBreaker demo I started posting…. Bplus tried it and noticed a counter was off.  The correction is all of changing one mislabeled variable to the correct one…. But I can’t do that.  Either I have to post the whole program over again, make a BEST POST highlight and *HOPE* folks see it, or I just write a casual comment of, “Change this yourself…”

Neither are really good options.  I can’t be certain everyone will see that Best Answer link and jump to it, nor can I expect them to be willing to make the change itself.  My code here is unmaintainable by myself, and that’s just not acceptable to me as a library creator.  As such, I just won’t be sharing or updating any libraries or massive projects here anymore.

At best, you’ll just see links saying, “Download and report issues from here instead.”  At least, until those get banned as well next.

[FellippeHeitor]

Whatever. Edit away.

[Pete]

WOOOOOOHOOOOOOO!