Edit function

[precipitate]

So, the edit function has, from the inception of this board, been used
repeatedly by participants to remove their words after significant
discussion has been made. This leaves threads pretty much
incomprehensible and worthless.

I wonder if a modification that would allow you to edit your posts for a
specified time period - say 30 minutes - would permit editing of typos
(and saving all the "Oops, I meant to say ..." posts that were on the old
eplaya) but would prevent this kind of raping and pillaging of
discussions.

Of course, since words belong to the participants, an admin request to
remove the content of a particular post should always be permitted.

But I wonder if limiting edit functions wouldn't make things a bit more fluid.

Or not. This is a topic for discussion, not necessarily a straight request.

[Kinetic II]

To counter the radical proposal listed above....
Here's a proposed rule guiding eplaya content:

Intellectual Property
The content of this message board may be protected by intellectual property rights but is not the exclusive property of the eplaya. Any material including, but not limited to, text, data, graphics, pictures, sounds, videos, logos, icons or HTML code that is protected under intellectual property law remains the author's or third party's property.

Posting your own intellectual property implies that eplaya is granted the right to store and display said property, but ownership of the intellectual property remains with the author (that's you).


Anyone posting on this board should never be forced to give up the rights to their work if they chose to protect it. And any post I make on this board is my own intellectual property, for better or worse.

The above policy is easily found on numerous BBS type systems across America and on the private board I run. It could be applied here. And I hope it's considered by the admin team.

[precipitate]

And my proposal runs counter to that how?

[III]

>attempt by a select few to hijack and have their way with the eplaya:

i'm not quite sure how holding people accountable for their words amounts to "hijacking". if anything, it would seem that using the features to try to twist conversations to your own ends is more in that vein than anything else.

but i'm drunk,so i probably make no sense at all...

[Araceli]

There's an answer to this that might satisfy K and P. Give users 30 minutes to edit their posts, then lock out the edit button. Deleting old posts as P states pillages the threads. But K has a point in protecting IP...allthough on here this is a public board and if you post anything that's questionable you should know better.

Does the 30 minute or even 15 minute timer on edits sound reasonable?

[Ivy]

eplaya is granted the right to store and display said property

If eplaya has a right to store and display said property (i.e., posts), then how does removing the entirely of a post play into this? This statement seems to say that eplaya would have a right to keep and display the original post even if an edit occurred.

[Araceli]

Once the 15/30 minute timeout is passed the eplaya should have full rights to keep and post any content they see fit. If anything is removed it would be an admin doing it. The community has made it clear that any admin changes like the Spanky issue I read about are now flagged with who removed what and why. Otherwise, after the 15/30 minute freeze consider that post carved in stone. It's not going anywhere.

[III]

>15/30 minute timeout

it's not a bad idea. unfortunately, i don't believe that's a feature of phpbb, and a quick looksee didn't show any approved mods to address the issue. actually getting it to be a feature of the eplaya, therefore, is a pretty moot point.

[Araceli]

Well that's easy enough then. For the time being the admins take away the edit function and let people post a second time for corrections. Then as things settle down and the admins look at making their own mods you add this to a proposed mod list. As long as the critics know it's going to be looked at again, why not try it? It can't make things any crazier than they already are.

[Booker]

This is not properly an intellectual property issue. Content of this board can be property to the extent that someone who didn't create it can be prevented (legally, not technically) from copying it without the creator's permission. But filling in the box and clicking submit pretty much has to constitute permission to display the post, no?

Therefore, the decision about misuse of the edit function to remove ill-considered posts is a simple question of admin policy, and in no way a property rights issue. Might be good to keep that line drawn.

[technopatra]

I'm not sure where to weigh in on this. I think that for every person who goes back and edits their posts for content, there must by 50 people like me who just use it when they notice that for the hundredth time they've typed "form" instead of "from".

Aside from Kinetic, I've noticed no one else using edit to delete or significantly alter their posts. My initial reaction is to continue to let folks edit, and encourage a cultural standard of not going back for content, rather than make an admin decision about it.

But if there are a number of folks doing this, then we should consider Araceli's suggestion that we disable the edit feature altogether. III is right, we have no timed-out mod.

Can someone give me some other examples of this happening? I don't mean to make you do extra work for this, but sometimes something that strikes us deeply gets re-interpreted in our heads as having happened _often_. I've caught myself at this and want to make sure I'm not just reacting to some well-stated, but still few, complaints.

[III]

>other examples of this happening?

the cafe thread which spanky suspended is the first example of this on the new eplaya.

i believe defacto replaced a couple of his posts with periods, though he then just started posting those randomly, so it'd be hard to find.

there were a couple of oxccurances on the old eplaya, before the feature was disabled. i seem to remember the concensus at the time was that it interefered more than it actually helped.

my vote (though this isn't a democracy) is that we leave it.

[precipitate]

> Aside from Kinetic, I've noticed no one else using edit to delete or
> significantly alter their posts.

Tawnee Lynne (now OFC, I believe).
De Facto.
Some guy who left and whose name I cannot for the life of me remember.
Kinetic.

I haven't been around much lately, so I'm not sure if it's a problem. And
now that I look at the list, I'm not sure I really care to preserve those
words, except in that their absence disturbs the flow of conversation.

I agree that this is a social issue, not a technological one. However, I
brought it up for discussion because this is one case where a technical
solution would be pretty easy and not terribly detrimental to the overall
experience. I also think that it's useful for people who might not otherwise
realize it to know that their editing themselves is disruptive to others,
but I guess that's a user FAQ kind of thing.

And I've been playing around with phpBB. Presenting an edit link based
on the post time would probably be trivial, so if it becomes important to
have, it can be done.

[Bob]

After one hour, for each character changed, insert a Megalomaniac smiley.

5000 characters changed wins a copy of the Nixon tapes -- the unexpurgated version.

[technopatra]

After one hour, for each character changed, insert a Megalomaniac smiley.

5000 characters changed wins a copy of the Nixon tapes -- the unexpurgated version.

Dammit Bob, how many times do I have to tell you people?
No making technopatra laugh Swiss Miss instant hot cocoa out of her nose.

<wiping tears from eyes>