remove the edit feature

MikeyBoy wrote:
Please don't delete your question after you've received an answer. It makes the thread useless for other people, and makes it useless as a resource for other people.

the solution proposed, to remove the edit button, is not as drastic as it may seem, new content may be put in a new post, really big typos may be fixed with errata, and bad typing tags by using the preview button.

just wanted to know your opinion on the whole issue, I doubt that this will be fixed as it requires touching code and the site it's being broken from a long time already.
I would suggest the edit option only available for people with a certain amount of posts.
I'm not sure I like the idea of removing the edit button. I think we should at least be given a short time period, say 15-30 minutes, to edit our posts. If there has been no following replies we could allow the edit button to be used no matter how long ago it was (you can remove the post in this case anyway).

I think it is important that the time doesn't run out while typing. It is not fun to spend a lot of time editing a post and then it doesn't work. There is already a problem with the submit failing and everything that was typed is lost. Experience has taught me to copy the message in case this happens so it's not a big problem for me but if it means my edit time runs out it would be frustrating.

It seems like it's more trouble than it's worth.
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I disagree because sometimes I will use the strike-through text modifier when something I said actually later turned out to be a mistake. It could save the future reader time in nothing having to read an errata correction post that might not be close in proximity to the original post. Plus I make little typos all the time that I don't notice immediately (ex: I was drawing a picture of how to visualize a linked list to someone, I didn't notice I said nodeC instead of nodeB). The posting system is quite buggy, like Peter87 said; this seems to just complicate it more.

Disallowing OP's edit after an hour I think is OK though, so I like a combination of Thomas and Peter's suggestions, without having to go hardcore no-edit mode.

I also must ask: Does the site owner even read this? There's a spambot that I think has 60+ posts and no one has been able to do anything about it... it's the most successful spambot I've ever seen.
Ideally I would want to apply a delta algorithm (e.g. like what diff does; the algorithm is properly called "longest common subsequence") that would forbid edits beyond a certain threshold. Or, it could allow only adding new characters, but not removing them. This would allow strike-through-style corrections, which I agree are useful to future readers.
As compromises, only allowing appending text or time-limited edit powers would be acceptable, I guess.

Sometimes I've reported posts that were less obviously spam that were later unreported, but that it was later found it really was spam and they got deleted; and other times I've reported more ambiguous non-spam abuse and they also went away. I guess at least there's someone doing manual review of reports. I don't really know if Twicker reads the forums, though. The last time he posted was in 2014.
I wouldn't appreciate that change. Granted, I have a bad habit of editing posts after submitting them.

For me, submitting a post causes a subconscious modal switch between writing and proof-reading. So if I'm not being extra careful, I'll miss stuff in the preview and edit box that I'll find some time after clicking submit (usually this happens quickly, but not always). The problems I find can be things as small as typos and bad formatting or as large as duplicated blocks of text, broken links, wrong code, or a discussion of something that's already been solved (i.e., proof that I didn't read the thread ;)).

My opinion is that as long as I notice and fix issues quick enough, these proposed changes improve the quality of the thread. Rather than preventing those changes, my suggestion is to track post revisions - i.e., shove them through a VCS, and let users browse those edits.
> I would suggest the edit option only available for people with a certain amount of posts.
http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/general/226134/
seems that 96 is too low.
Personally, I value posts - and threads - being as clear and as readable as possible (*), so the ability to go back and edit my posts to make them clearer or to fix mistakes, where I need to. So the ability to edit posts is invaluable to to, and I'd hate to lose it.

I do try to be honest in my edits; if I've said something stupid or incorrect, I tend to use strikethrough and add an extra explanatory comment, rather than try and delete stuff to look myself look better. But I feel like it's important to be able to improve the quality of my post after the fact, for exactly the same reasons that it's important that people do not delete their questions after they've got an answer.

I like Thomas's suggestion, personally. Yes, we'd still get an occasional outlier such as the one ne555 links to, but you'd hope someone with that many posts would be invested in using this forum enough to accept advice on how to be a better user.

(*) Which is one reason why people deleting their posts really annoys me.
Removing the edit facility (for even new members) is an utterly absurd suggestion.

What that would do is: make sure that vast majority of new members would not be be able to make the original code readable by placing it within code tags, because a minuscule minority may remove the question after an answer has been received.
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