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### Topic

#### Permit viewing of post edit history

God help me, I'm about to say that something that Facebook has done (recently, btw) is a good idea.
I'd like to be able to see how a Forum post has been edited since it was originally posted. Although I imagine most of the time people edit to clarify their original intent or to fix grammar and spelling, I know that sometimes they do it in ways that shift the terms of a debate and undercut the responses and arguments of others.
I'd really like to be able to see the edit history of posts.
ETA: Full disclosure—I edited this post to clarify my point and to remove an implication that the linked post changed its title IN ORDER TO undermine responses. I don't know that was the intent and didn't intend myself to say that I did, so I reworded.

Posted 87 days ago by Pascale | Permalink

### Replies

- Completely agreed, and not just for posts but for comments too. And the ability to edit posts and comments should absolutely be removed when the post is locked for inactivity.
  Let's not have memory holes in glitch, eh?
  Eta: how could a thread be locked for inability?
  Posted 86 days ago by katlazam | Permalink
- Oh my goodness yes.
  We need this due to "mature" discussions.
  Posted 86 days ago by ₰ℓ№ʀ | Permalink
- Edit histories would mean every single edit made to a comment would need to be kept track of and stored, and this can build up to really high amounts if people edit their comments often. It may not be doable simply because of a storage space restriction, though it would definitely be useful.
  An alternative that wouldn't compromise storage space as much is to have edit history be available only for a few hours or maybe a day or so - enough to cover cases of people going back to edit their stuff for reasons such as "mature" discussions.
  Another alternative (which could still potentially double the amount of stored posts) is to have just the very first version of a post be saved - so when it's edited you can still see what the post was, originally.
  A less useful alternative but still better than no indication would be to just add a note to the bottom of the post (like many forums do) to say "this post was edited by ___ on some day some month some year at xx:xx pm. this post was edited y times total".
  Posted 86 days ago by Makai | Permalink
- IANAD (I am not a developer, at least not anymore), but I'm pretty sure the overhead for storing text strings, even with a little added code for timestamping, is just NOT very big. Yes, it's extra work and extra code, but in terms of storage, it's trivial.
  Posted 86 days ago by Pascale | Permalink
- It's trivial individually, but as a whole it adds up, and for a site with the primary objective of hosting a game (as opposed to just text), permanent full edit history just isn't worth the resources (imo at least, TS may feel differently). It doesn't seem like a cost-effective solution for what is a very specific problem - it's greatly increasing the number of entries stored for forum data while only being useful in very, very specific cases.
  Personally if I were the developer I would go with the temporary post history solution - keep it for a couple of days at most (most topics will not even be read anymore when they're dead, so it's mostly a non-issue for older posts) and then wipe the additional entries. Mostly because when someone edits a post to save face it's mid-discussion, not days later, so you'd still be able to view edit history while it's relevant.
  Posted 86 days ago by Makai | Permalink
- Makai, threads eventually get locked and archived. I don't think there's so much editing that the burden will become significant. After all, it still all text, which is extremely lightweight.
  But, that's just my guesstimate. TS will surely make a decision based on how useful they consider this suggestion to be and how they want to distribute their resources (both human and technical).
  Posted 86 days ago by Pascale | Permalink
- You're probably right re: the lack of enough editing for it to matter. I edit my posts compulsively for typos/mistakes, I'm probably estimating based on that which... is most likely not the case for everyone. I think I've edited 90% of my posts at least once because of little things...
  Posted 86 days ago by Makai | Permalink
- How about allowing editing of something only until it's been replied to? I know sites that do that, and it allows people to edit for typos and so on while preventing them from editing in such a way that, say, the responses to a post saying "I hate kittens" seem incredibly rude once it's been edited to "I like butterflies".
  Posted 86 days ago by Not a Princess | Permalink
- That seems like a very sensible solution, Not a Princess! Although it might be trickier to implement for thread responses than for the initial post.
  Posted 86 days ago by Pascale | Permalink
- Not tricky at all, actually! Much simpler and quicker to implement than edit history, too (seriously would take maybe 10 lines of additional code and one extra query depending on how things are set up). +1 to that idea. (:
  Posted 86 days ago by Makai | Permalink
- +1 to the idea of being able to edit only until there is a reply
  (edit history would be OK, but I don't think it's worth the effort)
  I would hate to not be able to edit at all, though, since I often do shortly after posting to fix awkward structure or poor phrasing.
  Posted 86 days ago by Janitch | Permalink
- I agree with everything Janitch just said.
  Posted 86 days ago by diaveborn ♥ | Permalink
- Thanks for starting this thread, Pascale!
  A concern re: edit history is the potential instance where someone has called out another player, for example, and edits after the fact. Unless staff is aware/moderates further, that player is still effectively being called out, if I understand correctly.
  I like Makai's suggestion of an "edited by" time stamp; perhaps a prompt beforehand can include the reason for editing as well. (Adding that: maybe a quote/multi-quote option could be an additional way of retaining meaning/context along with more specific posting guidelines in this regard.)
  Posted 86 days ago by Christine | Permalink
- -1 As someone who has said things they sometimes regret, or who has let things out into the internets that, quite some time later, they realise is sharing too much private/personally identifiable information, I hate it when you can't edit something. It can be very worrying/damaging if something's out there that you can't change, maybe you can contact someone who works at the site, but you're beholden to their good nature and/or ability to do anything about it.
  I would also hate to have that information still accessible (e.g. to search engines) after I've got rid of it.
  To my mind, having a conversation not make sense any more is less important than the privacy benefits that having a free-edit world can bring.
  Posted 86 days ago by shhexy corin | Permalink
- I like Makai's suggestion of an "edited by" time stamp; perhaps a prompt beforehand can include the reason for editing as well.
  I'd support this, though.
  And think staff should have access to stuff that was posted, at least for a short time, so they can effectively monitor abuse
  Posted 86 days ago by shhexy corin | Permalink