You might have noticed that there are two circumstances under which it is no longer possible to edit your forum posts on the MSX Resource Center

- When someone else already has replied to the forum thread after you did
- When your post has been online for more than 30 minutes

Let me first explain why we have implemented these locks. The MSX Resource Center forums are getting busier and busier and at times it is very difficult to follow all forum threads and posts to check if people are living up to our forum policies. While testing our new search engine we noticed that several people had been changing or even removing all text in posts in old forum threads. Also in several discussions posts had been altered, making some discussions look very strange. We are trying to limit the moderation-work to a minimum, thus checking all forum post edits seemed quite undoable. We also think of our forum as a valuable archive for people who have questions that might already have been discussed on our forums.

We are currently trying these edit locks to see how they work out and if (and why) they have to be altered a bit to keep our site user friendly. We hope you can understand why we are experimenting with these locks. True, it might not be able to brush some typo's away, but I personally do not care too much about it. Everybody makes typo's, nobody really cares about it if you make some typo's every now and then. True, it might not be able to add information to your initial forum post, but it's not a shame to post a second forum post with some additions/extra details, is it?

We're planning to keep the locks on this tight for quite a while, to see if we can all get used to it. If you really really really want to see something edited, you can always contact us about it. Based on the experiances of a certain period of time, we might adjust the lock-triggers a bit.

typo's are a pain for searchengines...

not so strong arguments snoutje. it's just plain irritating.... oh, well. it's your forum, your rules. We'll see how long this will hold. Maybe we'll get used to this limitation within a few days... still keep up the good work MRC team. we love ya all the same (crawl, crawl)

I prefer to deliver quality texts as good as I can .. if that means editing a typo, then so be it.. if someone edits an early posts, while spoiling the replies, then that person will know about it from other users.. so there doesn't need to be a restriction on forum/mod level for this.. (and how often does this happen anyway?)

Esp. with so many foreign readers around here, it's very important that the english texts are of good quality.

-imho-

If you have a personal website, you can also put on this site edited versions of your messages on MRC.

So, I could add on each new post on MRC the following text :

"It could be that since this message has been posted on MRC, it has been edited. If you want to see the good version of this post, go to this page : ....."

Of course, it's extra work, but why not ??? By this way, I can unlock my post and actualize it. It's my choice, and as my posts are my propriety, I may do that !

Quote:

If you have a personal website, you can also put on this site edited versions of your messages on MRC.

*buzz* you're not going to the next round -the dishwasher- .. instead you'll have a set of forks and knives

This would mean moderators would have more work correcting errors I think. At the moment I'm slowly working on a PHP version on my home page. I would like to be able to correct the deep-links I made in several posts to the new ones once it's online.

Too many rules can kill a discussion or a forum. If someone answers very fast to my post, i can't no more edit my post to at least correct typos or evident errors in the message !

So, if this rule doesn't disappear, there will be only real choice : choose another MSX forum without excessive rules ! Sorry for the future of MRC, but that's the risk !

And what if two messages are posted at the same time, as it has just happened ???

And what if I answer myself to one of my posts, as it has just happened ???

well, snout could have done it a little bit different. i would keep the 'edit post' feature alive but with a little modification.
to see if a user deletes his post by editing, you could add a little line below the post that contains something like xx% modified. then you can easily see if someone abuses a 'edit post' feature.

i don't like it either, without this feature. but mars2000you, i wouldnt call this an excessive rule

Quote:

Too many rules can kill a discussion or a forum. If someone answers very fast to my post, i can't no more edit my post to at least correct typos or evident errors in the message ! So, if this rule doesn't disappear, there will be only real choice : choose another MSX forum without excessive rules ! Sorry for the future of MRC, but that's the risk !

Another option : I answer to my post by giving the corrected version, so the understanding of the discussion will become very hard (if someone makes as me !) :

CORRECTED VERSION OF THE ABOVE MESSAGE :

Too many rules can kill a discussion or a forum. If someone answers very fast to my post, i can't no more edit my post to at least correct typos or evident errors in the message !

So, if this rule doesn't disappear, there will remain only one real option : choose another MSX forum without excessive rules ! Sorry for the future of MRC, but that's the risk !

Quote:

well, snout could have done it a little bit different. i would keep the 'edit post' feature alive but with a little modification. to see if a user deletes his post by editing, you could add a little line below the post that contains something like xx% modified. then you can easily see if someone abuses a 'edit post' feature. i don't like it either, without this feature. but mars2000you, i wouldnt call this an excessive rule

Your proposition about the xx% modified part seems me the good way !

To precise my reaction : the rule is not excessive, but the way to avoid abuse editing is not the best, because it is source of disavantages for serious users of the forum. To punish a minority, all the users are punished ....

Quote:

Your proposition about the xx% modified part seems me the good way ! To precise my reaction : the rule is not excessive, but the way to avoid abuse editing is not the best, because it is source of disavantages for serious users of the forum. To punish a minority, all the users are punished ....

i can say one thing:
you are right..

the simplest solution of all: restore the forumsystem the way it was!