Feature proposal: Editing of posts
Brent Bartlett
Public
Seen by 91
A recent proposal showed that a majority support a feature that allows editing of posts. Here's my suggestion for how this would work. I'm mainly opening this thread up for discussion of implementation, though, so everybody can kick ideas around and hopefully come up with something that we all like.
My suggestion is: There will be some kind of indication that a post has been edited, e.g. a string at the top or bottom of the post that says "Edited at ______" with a timestamp. This string will not appear if the post was edited a brief period of time after it was posted (say, 60 seconds). This allows users to clean up small typos and punctuation without being "penalized".
StefOfficiel Mon 6 Oct 2014 11:03PM
I think that would be good too. Or a preview system as the original post. This allows to read before publishing.
Deleted account Tue 7 Oct 2014 4:50PM
BTW, the actual preview system for new posts is buggy. It sometimes doesn't display the one being currently written but only highlights the most recent one in the flow.
AlexB Wed 8 Oct 2014 12:22AM
I think we need more than a preview function -- people just write, post, and then re-read their post. Even with a preview function available, typos etc still make it to the first actual post. I don't think we do ourselves any good if we expect people to be ultra-careful -- we have to build in some leeway for carelessness!
To me, a simple edit-post function, with some sort of timestamp after five minutes, would sort out this issue for a lot of people. As long as it is clear that we're not guaranteeing that people on other pods will see the edits immediately, I don't see the problem posed by the federation-induced lag.
This feature (as I see it) is just so that people can fix typos -- not a grand motive, but something that I've seen asked for several times by newcomers. And something simple to achieve, I believe.
StefOfficiel Wed 8 Oct 2014 7:47PM
"Pas Faux" ! AlexB is right !
Rob Wed 8 Oct 2014 10:08PM
AlexB is on the right track.
There is something about re-reading your own "actually published" post that makes you notice errors you didn't notice in a preview.
I always like systems that say something like "edit (for another 15 minutes)" and the number goes down dynamically. This gives you a nice clear indication that you still have a chance to change it before it goes "permanent", and how much of a chance you actually have. I dunno that it needs to be 15 minutes, maybe 5 is fine. Either way, the tricky part is probably making sure that the post doesn't propagate anywhere until the clock hits zero. But once it does it's pretty obvious that you've now "put it out there" and there's no going back. Which is, you know, the Internet.
Antoine Cezar Thu 9 Oct 2014 12:26AM
+1 for AlexB
Maybe the pod can prevent publication during a short delay when you post (à la Gmail).
It avoids dealing with the federation and solve incrementaly the problem.
Then another increment would be "how to extend this with federation handling".
But only if the users still complain a lot about edit.
Poll Created Thu 9 Oct 2014 1:19AM
Pending post proposal Closed Thu 9 Oct 2014 3:07PM
Failed
As a user,
When I post,
Then the post is not really posted, it is pending.
And it appears in my stream as if it was really posted but is editable
And a countdown indicate the remain pending time
As a user,
When I edit a pending post,
Then the client advertise the the pod of the edit so it is not posted for good during the edit,
And the pending time is reseted when I confirm my edit.
The default pending time 1min, adjustable in settings: 0s 10s 30s 1min 10min 30min
Optionaly:
As a user,
When I click on the countdow of a pending post (or a sendnow button?),
Then the pendind is canceled and the post is posted for good
Results
| Results | Option | % of points | Voters | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
Agree | 10.0% | 1 |
|
| Abstain | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Disagree | 80.0% | 8 |
|
|
| Block | 10.0% | 1 |
|
|
| Undecided | 0% | 137 |
|
10 of 147 people have participated (6%)
Rob
Thu 9 Oct 2014 1:26AM
With a couple caveats: 1min seems awfully short for a default? And I'd worry that a manual override link could be mistaken as something you have to click to complete the post. Otherwise it sounds great.
Brent Bartlett
Thu 9 Oct 2014 3:26AM
I dislike countdowns. They feel "stressy" to me. I'd like to be able to feel like I can go back and edit at any time, if I want.
goob · Mon 6 Oct 2014 10:48AM
This still doesn't happen in many cases - both in posting and deletion. Also, comments sometimes don't get federated on posts which have been federated. Until federation is far more reliable across all pods, there is no way to guarantee, or even to expect, that people on different pods will be seeing (and commenting on/liking) the same version of a post. Therefore time-stamping of edits is not a solution until federation is both instant and reliable.