h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

One of the most common complaints researchers have with this site is the inability to edit our posts. How many times have you clicked on "post message" and immediately caught a typo or grammatical error or realized you changed thoughts mid-sentence. The best you can do is quickly add another post to clarify/correct/apologize for the previous post. The preview button is good, but we all know it's under used. Even when it is used, some things still get by us.

Now, I would not want unlimited edit capabilities as these can lead to very confused forum threads if everyone is allowed to change their posts willy-nilly.

However, I've recently starting using the DIGG.com website and they have a feature that I think would be very handy here.

After making a forum post or comment there is a 5 minute window to edit that post. 5 minutes is more than enough time to take back an "OOPS". 60 seconds would probably suffice.

I think this would be a very welcome change for everyone involved.

You could also say after five replies within the five mintutes. There was over 200 posts in the QI thread about Cause Of Death II. Each time you refreshed the page there always seemed to be two unread threads.

How about making a post editable until there's a new post on the thread? If you're in the middle of editing while a new post is made and you find that you can't upload the edited version when it's ready, well that's just unfortunate timing.

Too much chance of a simpost. The following post may be in response to the same post your post is responding to and not to your post.

Even if I could edit that sentence, I wouldn't. It makes sense... if you read it twice.

Another suggestion about editing posts is that I have seen a lot of researchers wanting to delete their posts but there is only one way of doing that and that is by yikesing it but in the end it won't be moderated because it is fine.

I don't think it matters which post is being replied to. As soon as the conversation has continued, it's my opinion that all previous posts should be left alone - frozen. If you forgot to preview (as most of us - me included - do) that's just too bad. Do it right next time.

Thank you for your suggestion. We don't think an 'edit post' function would be practical on h2g2. It creates a bit of a problem where moderation is concerned. Which version of a posting is moderated? Do we moderate it at the end of the minute? (That wouldn't necessarily be a safeguard for us).

(Our experience with Personal Spaces tells us that people would be cheeky and use it to say something that they change later, offending other members of the community).

Hope that makes sense!

That's why I suggest only a 1 minute window. I sincerely doubt anyone would abuse the 1 minute edit time and even if they did, the "My Convos" pane doesn't refresh that fast so it's unlikely that even if they did so that anyone else would have seen their temporary post.