New forum 'parousia' is upon us! (software version) (page 2)

besty

nah : it was more the coming with clouds that tickled me :-)

great job Simon - looking forward to seeing the new version

and stops me whinging about a Like button ;-)

Apognophos

One reason for the post edits is that it allows, for instance, someone to edit a post as they want it to be even if the time has run out and then be able to flag it for review by a mod (or maybe the review flag happen automatically) who can then decide to accept the edit or not.

I appreciate that you are making the change in order to allow long-term post editing. One of the biggest problems with the current system is when a link breaks, say, a year after the poster used the link in his post, or when the first post in a thread should be updated on the basis of later information in the thread. Of course, most forums allow unmoderated, unlimited post editing, so they've never had this problem. Personally I've only witnessed one occasion, out of all the forums I've been a part of, where an exiting forum member abused the editing feature to blank all of his posts on his way out.

Thus, as far as I'm concerned, the rule about designing the system for general use and handling the occasional exception should apply in this way: users can edit their posts whenever they want without version control making those changes accessible to their peers. If someone abuses this, a moderator can view or roll back the post to an earlier version. Simply making this one change -- restricting the viewing of a post's history to those in the moderator group -- will be an improvement. I can't see what advantage there is to allowing regular users access to it at all, no matter whether conveniently or 'with some effort'.

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I forgot to mention that I wasn thinking of adding a draft authoring option as well to allow people to author things over a period of time, saving as they go but only publishing when finished (only for topics though).

Draft authoring would be nice. I've had a number of drafts for topics that I was pecking away at, and I've had to store them in .txt files around my hard drive, or in Google Drive, which isn't much fun.

Simon

Whenever I mention cloud I hear it in old-school batman style cut-scene in my head.

"Quick, to the cloud!" (spiral fade with diddle-diddle-dum music)

Jeannette

Thank you, Simon. You're a good man.

Simon

I appreciate that you are making the change in order to allow long-term post editing. One of the biggest problems with the current system is when a link breaks, say, a year after the poster used the link in his post, or when the first post in a thread should be updated on the basis of later information in the thread. Of course, most forums allow unmoderated, unlimited post editing, so they've never had this problem. Personally I've only witnessed one occasion, out of all the forums I've been a part of, where an exiting forum member abused the editing feature to blank all of his posts on his way out.

It depends on the site. Many have some limit on the edits or risk a malware or disgruntled user attack. It was a common feature way back when I developed the original software and I think it's valuable and helps keep the discussions cohesive. What you are describing sounds more like a forum coerced into use as a Wiki.

But exJWs bring their own special challenges that other forums don't face.

Thus, as far as I'm concerned, the rule about designing the system for general use and handling the occasional exception should apply in this way: users can edit their posts whenever they want without version control making those changes accessible to their peers. If someone abuses this, a moderator can view or roll back the post to an earlier version. Simply making this one change -- restricting the viewing of a post's history to those in the moderator group -- will be an improvement. I can't see what advantage there is to allowing regular users access to it at all, no matter whether conveniently or 'with some effort'.

We'll see how it goes. One of the benefits to having it there is that it may act as a deterrent to people thinking they can get away with trickery that they can elsewhere. It happened fairly regularly here with people claiming to be the victim when they were not.

I think for most posts / edits it's going to be more useful to the author to check their changes and maybe for them to be able to revert accidental mistakes.

I thought of another feature I added - the one thing that has driven me mad the most so I'm sure it must have annoyed other people too:

Have you ever been editing / typing up a really long, in depth post? You scroll back to copy a quote from someone else and oh, wait - it must be on the previous page (click) ... pause ... horror or realization ... Noooooooooo!!!

Yes, you lose the post you were writing! The other one that got me was catching the 'back' side button on the mouse against the keyboard and bam, work lost :(

Well, now you will at least get a warning if you start posting or editing something and try to navigate away. I am going to work on having it save drafts locally to protect against browser crashes as well.

_Morpheus

Sweet... Looking forward to it

Apognophos

Well, now you will at least get a warning if you start posting or editing something and try to navigate away. I am going to work on having it save drafts locally to protect against browser crashes as well.

Ah, yes, in fact I think this may be the most important improvement you can make. I type all my long posts in a text editor just to prevent this. On the Mac, at least in Firefox, Command-Shift-left/right arrow, normally used to navigate to the start/end of a line of text, will cause the browser to navigate back/forward, wiping the post I was trying to reposition the cursor in. This doesn't happen in other forum software, so I had to learn the hard way to stop using that key combo whenever I'm on this particular forum and use Option-Shift-arrow instead to move one word at a time. It was a very Pavlovian learning experience to become disabused of that shortcut through the trauma of lost posts (think of animals being shocked electrically instead of rewarded with food).

What you are describing sounds more like a forum coerced into use as a Wiki.

I'm not sure what you mean. Are you referring to my examples of editing old posts? Updating the first post in a thread is very common practice for threads that are used for:

- releases (software, charts, etc.), because usually the first post should be changed to reflect later versions when they're released (a link might need to be updated, or an instruction changed),

- compilation threads ("Let's compile a list of examples where the Society's publications contradicted modern-day medical wisdom"), and

- "papers" which might need corrections based on subsequent discussion. E.g., this was the most labor-intensive topic I ever created, but despite my best efforts I still made a few factual errors which were pointed out by other members. If I could have edited the original post, it would have prevented my giving out any incorrect information in what I felt was a very important post that deserved a lot of attention from active Witnesses.

New forum 'parousia' is upon us! (software version)

besty

Apognophos

Simon

Jeannette

Simon

_Morpheus

Apognophos

DwainBowman

Terry

TD

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