Cannot edit older posts.

[hikoki]

"Prime Post Revision" is in development.
Dunno if the history of edits can only be seen by the admins.

Edit:

I think the admins can assign different permissions like allowing any user to only view changes of any post in the forum, that's what you wanted? If so, keep your eyes peeled for this extension

[bob_fossil]

Personally, I think the current system is fine. The ability to immediately edit posts to fix typos is useful but extending this to allow edits hours or days after the original post is - as others have pointed out - just going to complicate discussions. It may make following the thread of conversation less clear if subsequent posts are quoting or referring to a post that doesn't contain that content any more.

And I don't really want to be having to look at a git / Sourcesafe style list of edit revisions or diffs to infer the true meaning of a post. If you need to add or change links in a post then add a new post at the end - the topic will then appear in 'Recent Topics' on the forum front page and it's obvious what has been added.

[Hikaru]

Frankly, that is an impressive number of people in one place just willing to voluntarily give up on whatever they write.
Anyway, it doesn't look like this thread is worth further time, so I'll keep this brief.

- It would probably help to hear a real explanation about why this became needed in the first place, because at the moment there isn't one. I don't mean that of the general case variety ('most common reasons of jumping out of windows include: ...'), but specifically relating to here and now.

- In case something like this would be left in effect regardless, I'd like to suggest explicitly including a warning along the lines of, 'you will be unable to edit your post after N hours', for example on top of the posting window itself. This would help to keep things fair as something people would have to explicitly agree to.

- I like your new 'rewriting history' meme and am going to use it around as much as possible in random sentences, e.g. 'let's rewrite history using the unknown ADD A mnemonic!' c:

[R-Tape]

Frankly, that is an impressive number of people in one place just willing to voluntarily give up on whatever they write.

I think of forum threads as conversations that take place in time, so I don't understand why it's 'giving up' anything.

- It would probably help to hear a real explanation about why this became needed in the first place, because at the moment there isn't one. I don't mean that of the general case variety ('most common reasons of jumping out of windows include: ...'), but specifically relating to here and now.

I don't know exactly what specifics you want, but the post after this gives the reasoning, they are part principle, part practical.

- In case something like this would be left in effect regardless, I'd like to suggest explicitly including a warning along the lines of, 'you will be unable to edit your post after N hours', for example on top of the posting window itself. This would help to keep things fair as something people would have to explicitly agree to.

I think we're back to a fundamental difference in the way we see things here, I just don't see why it's assumed a post can be edited anytime. I don't think think it's necessary but have no objection if Ricardo/Peter wanted to put the work in.

[R-Tape]

We’ve decided to keep a limit of some kind, and until there’s a good reason to extend it we’ll keep it at 2 hours.

The reasons:

To ensure the structural integrity of forum threads. At some point a post should be set in stone so it can be seen in context with what goes before and after it.

It’s impossible to moderate anytime editing, and this is before we take malicious or spam users into account. If a perfect plugin solution appears we’ll consider it but we don’t want to keep making extra work if we can avoid it.

It’s upsetting that this will be seen by some as a lack of trust, but it’s a rule that admins will apply to themselves, we should all expect to stand by a post at some point. It goes without saying that if any mod gets caught with their cock in the jam jar we’ll be hauled over coals for it.

Site admins will be happy to correct download links, gaffs, regrettable moments of whimsy and any other relevant stuff for you. I know that’s not ideal.

[Hikaru]

I think of forum threads as conversations that take place in time, so I don't understand why it's 'giving up' anything.

In the end, forums are just another form of information exchange online, with its share of conventions that IIRC have remained more or less the same since the late 90's, with all the CGI-based UBB's, where this particular variety of forums was initially introduced to begin with.
They have a number of settings and options that just default to 'on' throughout the years, unless someone specifically decides to apply physical force and switch them off.

I suppose an attempt to resolve the (real) fundamental differences ITT should probably begin with some basic facts like that, anyway. Personally, I find it a 'you either get it or you don't' type topic, so not feeling particularly tempted to.

I don't know exactly what specifics you want, but the post after this gives the reasoning, they are part principle, part practical.

I mean something that would explain doing this out of the blue 3 months in, of course. There's typically some kind of a precedent/context wherever a serious change like that is imposed. What happened here? What did we miss?

For clarity, I don't doubt your good intentions, and I will not dwell on this topic seeing as most people here seem to consent with it.

[R-Tape]

I mean something that would explain doing this out of the blue 3 months in, of course. There's typically some kind of a precedent/context wherever a serious change like that is imposed. What happened here? What did we miss?

I set this parameter back in November, nothing has changed.

[hikoki]

No one will ask admins to edit posts.
Who cares for drama queens, politicians and bullshido fighters? Spammers can be detected in many ways?
I provided an extension above that will be ready in a few months. It can be useful at least for administration purposes.

[Hikaru]

I mean something that would explain doing this out of the blue 3 months in, of course. There's typically some kind of a precedent/context wherever a serious change like that is imposed. What happened here? What did we miss?

I set this parameter back in November, nothing has changed.

Oh. I see. Somehow I had the impression that editing older posts worked for me before, but perhaps I just never noticed.

[R-Tape]

Oh. I see. Somehow I had the impression that editing older posts worked for me before, but perhaps I just never noticed.

I've managed to get most things wrong with the phpBB interface but I definitely set that to 120 mins on forum set up! The permissions are a crazy melange though, that can affect it. Nobody's been able to edit outside of 2 hours before have they?

[Ast A. Moore]

Haven’t timed it, but no, I don’t think I could do that. Granted, I noticed the limbo time was greater than on WoS, which pleasantly surprised me.

[1024MAK]

Having read through all the posts in this thread, regardless of the "why not at any time" vs. having a restriction, I don't recall any reason why two hours was chosen as the limit.

I can understand having a restriction. But would much prefer the time limit to be a bit longer. Two hours is okay if real life does not get in the way. But at least in my case, real life often gets in the way, so when I read someone else's post in a thread, it's not unknown for me to notice that I made an error in one of my earlier posts.

So for me, if there has to be a restriction, then twelve hours would be my preferred time limit.

While on the subject of forum history, are multiple backup copies of the data kept? So if it was later discovered that, say a member had gone back and deleted or changed posts, or the context of posts, could a backup be used to restore them?

Mark

[Rorthron]

Having read through all the posts in this thread, regardless of the "why not at any time" vs. having a restriction, I don't recall any reason why two hours was chosen as the limit.

I chose to set it to 2 hours. My thinking was to set a reasonable amount of time to allow correcting mistakes but not so long as to allow people to rewrite history.

Ultimately it's an arbitrary number, but so is any other number we are likely to choose, including your suggestion of 12 hours. One problem with longer periods is that moderators have to keep an eye on new posts for longer. From my personal perspective more than two hours is burdensome.

I'm afraid I don't know about your other question. That will have to be for someone else on the team.

[PeterJ]

We pay for our hosting service Digital Ocean to backup the whole site once a week. Then if we had a crash we would loose at most a week of data. There are no other backups.

I concur with the other admins in that having longer post edit times makes our lives much harder as we have to check more posts. This really is not practical. Looking at other forums in the past week my personal feeling is that two hours is generous. If people feel that passionate that a post needs editing they can easily contact an admin.

[MatGubbins]

Two hours is more than enough to edit a post to correct a few spelling mistakes, alter a bit of code or make sure that the picture links work properly.