Should users be able to edit their own posts?

[Persell]

You think your website counts as "the real world"?

It certainly does. But if you want, I can write a statement on a piece of paper and put it on the bulletin board over on the wall. Then, I'll take it down and burn that piece of paper.

You think THAT'S the real world? Any place where you can make statements and then retract them without accountability is NOT the real world. Yes, that means the world of global politics is at least sometimes "unreal."

Look, where it happens is not the point. It is all in the real world. The point is what is desired from the medium. You clearly desire a medium where everything, once said, is kept forever. I desire a medium where irrelevancies and errors can be weeded out.

What is irrelevant to the person who said it may not be irrelevant to all who heard/read it. Editing removes accountability by giving individuals the ability to decide for themselves whether or not the things they say are relevant. YOU don't get to decide that, Relic . . . the LISTENERS do. Communication is a two-party affair, and editing puts too much power in the hands of the message-deliverer. The recipient has no similar recourse. Editing of the sort proposed for these forums allows ONLY the message-sender to determine what remains in the public record and what does not. This is unfair and antithetical to responsible communication.If something is TRULY irrelevant, the mods (who are presumed to be neutral third parties) will eliminate it. The sender should not have that power.

Because OTHER PEOPLE might NOT think their
input is no longer relevant or desirable.

Precisely. And if they don't think it's relevant anymore, chances are you won't think so either.

False. People are generally not as intelligent or as educated as I like to think I am, and as such, they are often mistaken concerning what is or is not relevant. I do not trust them to edit their own work for relevancy, nor do I expect them to trust me in this regard.

What are the odds of you losing something you really needed because of such an incidence?

Very, VERY high.

(And you don't have to shout. I can read you clearly enough, thank you).

If I were shouting, I'd use fucking exclamation points, dumbass. That's what they're for. Some of us KNOW how to use punctuation properly. I use caps in the place of italics of boldface because it's easier to type and generally achieves the same effect.

Once you post something in an online forum, it belongs to the masses. You should not be able to edit, delete, or amend it at your own capricious whims.

That is your religion, mine is different, and I doubt either of will convert. :-) ... but just to take a stab at it: what if someone posted, say, personal information by mistake and wanted it removed ASAP?

Too fucking bad. Don't be a dumbass next time. If it's REALLY important to you, contact a moderator. I guarantee that if you explain to the mods that you have accidentally posted your Mastercard account number and expiration date on their forums, they will delete them as soon as they stop laughing their fucking asses off.

Shouldn't they be allowed? I realize this is rarely a problem, I just have to rebel a bit against your blankent statement of information belonging to the masses.

If you're stupid enough to post sensitive information in a public forum, then yes, it DOES belong to the masses . . . and you're a fucking idiot. President Ford didn't get to take it back when he accidentally revealed the existence of the SR-71 to the American public. In proclaiming it in a public setting, he made it public information. You can't just take things back. Information, once made public, belongs to the people. If you're too stupid to keep your private information to yourself, then maybe you shouldn't be saying anything at all.

Now, if I understand you correctly, you start out by saying that your primary concern is not that people edit things for dishonest reasons, yet more or less every point you have after that is about dishonest behaviour.

No, it's about accountability. I'm not worried about what people WILL do if permitted to edit. I'm worried about what they WON'T do. And what they WON'T do is think twice before saying something stupid because they'll know they can always go back and edit it. I'm not really concerned about dishonesty. I'm concerned about a LACK of accountability. When people know they can efface their stupidity with impunity, they tend to reveal it more often. I want less stupidity, not more.

It is a rare person who doesn't anticipate that he'll do regrettable things sooner or later. Especially online. ;-)

And that's the fucking problem with most online communities . . . people just ACCEPT that they'll say stupid things and don't bother TRYING NOT TO SAY STUPID THINGS. Unlimited editing only exacerbates this problem by allowing people to erase their stupidity from the public record.

There's no need for an edit function unless you PLAN on saying things you'll want to disappear later. And frankly, I don't want those sorts of people on my forum anyway. Not allowing people to edit their posts forces them to take responsibility for the things they say.

That is not true, but I expect you're overstating a bit to emphasize the point. I submit myself as an example of a person who does not plan to but certainly expects to make and correct mistakes in posts further down the road.

Then make additional posts.

I also imagine I'd like to update old posts with fresh information where applicable.

Then make posts of this sort in the submissions section. Hell, we can call it the "living documents" section if you'd like.

OK. Can we just agree that the situation where person A posts something, person B quotes it, person A removes the original, and person B then edits his quotation ... is deeply, seriously contrived and irrelevant, on grounds of it not happening in the real world?

People are intentionally misquoted ALL THE TIME in the real world . . . ESPECIALLY when there's no public record of what they actually said, or such records are obscure and difficult to acquire.

And if it does, I guarantee you that the information involved was nothing you'd care about anyway.

What do I get if your guarantee should fail?

Arguments for allowing it have been posted. Your summary of them is incorrect, therefore your conclusion that the concerns are non-existent is wrong.

Well if I'm summarizing your argument incorrectly, then post them again. Tell me what your arguments for unlimited editing are so that I can understand them properly.

Also, making posts non-editable doesn't make people accountable for anything. It makes assumed identities accountable which is hardly as useful.

I think it's just as useful. Assumed identities are still people. There is no difference between holding a person accountable and holding an assumed identity accountable, except that a GROUP of people may assume an identity, so you may in fact be holding SEVERAL people accountable.

I assume what you want is a way of gauging whether a persona on this forum can generally be trusted.

Well you assume wrongly. I already KNOW not to trust most folks on these forums.

You are correct in stating that editing is not necessary in order to correct mistakes. But it is tidier, saves space and bandwidth, and it saves the time of other readers to read up on a subject if mistakes have been removed and clarifications made. I find it very annoying to read half way through a thread and discover that the first half became irrelevant as things were cleared up later on.

I find it entertaining. Part of the reason I use forums is for that narrative feel.

This is the kind of annoyance I would like to be without - and I think most information seekers would.

And I don't find it an annoyance at all. In fact, what you describe is one of my favorite features of online forums - their narrative nature.

This is a good idea, and it would solve half of my problem, however I bet there would be others who wouldn't like that. It seems there are two kinds of concerns with disappearing information:


1) Resources disappearing.


2) Dishonesty in discussion.

Funny, my PRIMARY concern is with neither of those. You clearly haven't been paying attention.

 

[Persell]

Accountability, Relic. That's my primary concern.


Not dishonesty, accountability.


I want people to write their posts KNOWING that they will be held accountable for what they say. This DRASTICALLY improves the quality of the discussion.


Availability. That's my secondary concern.


I don't want any DIRECTLY INVOLVED party to have control over what information remains available and what does not. A presumably neutral third party moderator is acceptable (though just barely), but those involved in a given discourse should NOT have unilateral control over the information presented. Information, once made public, BELONGS to the public, not to the person who announced it.


Narrative. That's my tertiary concern.


I LIKE the way unedited forums evolve, and I like to be able to witness that process. I don't find it to be an annoyance at all. I find it entertaining. And my enterainment clearly trumps your annoyance, since you're a fucking shitdick.  


I have seen EXCEEDINGLY few good reasons for unlimited editing, and the few good reasons I have seen can be satisfied by creating an explicitly labelled "living documents" section in which people can edit to their hearts' desires.

 

[MikeOQuinn]

A note to TSJ


After reviewing your comments, I have come to the conclusion that, while on a number of points I sympathize and agree with you, I cannot fully get behind an argument based primarily upon self-aggrandizement, personal insults, and threats to leave if your requests are not met.


Statements such as

And my enterainment clearly trumps your annoyance, since you're a fucking shitdick.

and

People are generally not as intelligent or as educated as I like to think I am, and as such, they are often mistaken concerning what is or is not relevant. I do not trust them to edit their own work for relevancy, nor do I expect them to trust me in this regard.

do not give me great cause to back your efforts.
Likewise, I would recommend that you allow that you will, in fact, have to use some of your precious time to accomplish some things. Like emphasizing text, for example.

If I were shouting, I'd use fucking exclamation points, dumbass. That's what they're for. Some of us KNOW how to use punctuation properly. I use caps in the place of italics of boldface because it's easier to type and generally achieves the same effect.

Laziness wins you no points in my corner.


I understand that you were an influential and prodigious poster on the old EC. That, however, means nothing here. Fact of the matter is, if we can survive without Yoshi (I'm not indicating that he has been run off, simply that his efforts on the EC are no longer guiding our progress), we can survive without the mighty TSJ. I cannot speak for anyone else here, but for myself, I say that if the current forums upset you so, the door will gladly shake your hand on the way out.


Keep it civil. I'm not against swearing, simply against attempts to verbally bully someone else into acquiescing to your point of view through personal insults and assumptions about your intelligence relative to his.

 

[Flagg]

Re: A note to TSJ

After reviewing your comments, I have come to the conclusion that, while on a number of points I sympathize and agree with you, I cannot fully get behind an argument based primarily upon self-aggrandizement, personal insults, and threats to leave if your requests are not met.

I see agreeing with his points of argument and disagreeing with his delivery as two wholly separate things. Why can't you fully back one and not the other?

Keep it civil. I'm not against swearing, simply against attempts to verbally bully someone else into acquiescing to your point of view through personal insults and assumptions about your intelligence relative to his.

He won't change. He also won't go away. I'm not saying this as either a defense or a condemnation of his behavior, but as an objective observation based on a long history of his non-compliance to a long history of requests nearly identical to yours.


My earnest advice is to give up trying to persuade him. You're just going to waste a lot of effort. If his style's not your cup of tea, you'll probably be better off just ignoring him.


-S

 

[Relic]

I took the liberty of skipping the parts where you mistake name-calling and tautologies for arguments. I try to be civil and to stick to the point. I would expect the same of you but if it gives you trouble I guess we'll have to get by each our own way. Do forgive me if there are parts of your argument that are lost to me. I have a higher probability of missing the point when I have to manually sift insult from arguments. This is probably mainly because I don't very much value the opinion of disrespectful people, simply because it makes it harder for me to respect them in return, and therefore harder for me to focus on the point in question. Maybe I'm just a bad person, I don't know.


Another thing I skipped - and you do this a lot - is parts such as this one:

There's no need for an edit function unless you PLAN on saying things you'll want to disappear later. And frankly, I don't want those sorts of people on my forum anyway. Not allowing people to edit their posts forces them to take responsibility for the things they say.

That is not true, but I expect you're overstating a bit to emphasize the point. I submit myself as an example of a person who does not plan to but certainly expects to make and correct mistakes in posts further down the road.

Then make additional posts.

...where all you do is say something completely irrelevant to the point and/or something that is basically a reiteration of what you said earlier and/or something that merely states an obvious consequence of following your proposal but without any thought given to the relevance or weight of this consequence. Whether you do this to get the last word or as a way of dodging the point I do not know. But I'll just leave it at that since it makes no difference to my point.

Look, where it happens is not the point. It is all in the real world. The point is what is desired from the medium. You clearly desire a medium where everything, once said, is kept forever. I desire a medium where irrelevancies and errors can be weeded out.

What is irrelevant to the person who said it may not be irrelevant to all who heard/read it.

This is true. I resubmit my prior point that I don't believe this will harm anything of import to this community (excluding you, perhaps). If the information is important there will be records, and there will be people remembering it. As you state further down, you value the process of documentation. I value the endpoint higher. This is where I think we fundamentally disagree, and I doubt anything will change that any time soon.

Editing removes accountability by giving individuals the ability to decide for themselves whether or not the things they say are relevant. YOU don't get to decide that, Relic . . . the LISTENERS do. Communication is a two-party affair, and editing puts too much power in the hands of the message-deliverer. The recipient has no similar recourse. Editing of the sort proposed for these forums allows ONLY the message-sender to determine what remains in the public record and what does not. This is unfair and antithetical to responsible communication.If something is TRULY irrelevant, the mods (who are presumed to be neutral third parties) will eliminate it. The sender should not have that power.

This is pure opinion, and I agree only with parts of it, and then only in principle. In my experience the positive track record of editable fora by far beats the perception of both lack of fairness and opposition of responsible communication.

Because OTHER PEOPLE might NOT think their
input is no longer relevant or desirable.

Precisely. And if they don't think it's relevant anymore, chances are you won't think so either.

False.

Very well, allow me to rephrase:


Precisely. And if they don't think it's relevant anymore, chances are most everyone else won't think so either. I realize this doesn't take you into account but since we can't make everyone happy the majority vote is still a strong point.

People are generally not as intelligent or as educated as I like to think I am, and as such, they are often mistaken concerning what is or is not relevant. I do not trust them to edit their own work for relevancy, nor do I expect them to trust me in this regard.

Fair enough. It's a good thing that you at least trust some of them to come up with something you'd bother to read. ;-)

What are the odds of you losing something you really needed because of such an incidence?

Very, VERY high.

OK, if you say so. I imagine this is because there are a lot of things that you really, really need --- because I doubt this would be the case for most everyone else here. I understand your concern though. Personally I usually download information I find valuable, simply because sites have a tendency to close or lose all their data just when you thought you'd found something reliable.

I use caps in the place of italics of boldface because it's easier to type and generally achieves the same effect.

Not quite. The general effect of italics and boldface is emphasis. The general effect of caps is SHOUTING. If the rest of your posts were in a friendly tone I would be inclined to think you were just emphasizing but since you have a general rudeness about you I assume you're just shouting. This is also the standard interpretation on the rest of the 'net, so there's hardly any reason to get worked up about it if I fail to magically know that you have been brought up differently than the rest of us in this respect.

President Ford didn't get to take it back when he accidentally revealed the existence of the SR-71 to the American public.

He wasn't posting in a forum. And editing something away is not the same as taking it back. What has been said and noticed by others is in the world even if you claim to have never said it.

No, it's about accountability. I'm not worried about what people WILL do if permitted to edit. I'm worried about what they WON'T do. And what they WON'T do is think twice before saying something stupid because they'll know they can always go back and edit it. I'm not really concerned about dishonesty. I'm concerned about a LACK of accountability. When people know they can efface their stupidity with impunity, they tend to reveal it more often. I want less stupidity, not more.

I have no reason to think that there is a bigger ratio of stupidity on an editable forum than on a non-editable one. I have good reason to think that there is a lower ratio of stupidity on fora where the regulars discourage stupidity and where the community shuns it.


If people say something stupid you can always consider it a part of the narrative, if you will. If they remove it don't worry - if it's important to you you'll probably remember, and if you forget it well ... it's gone.


In any case: just as non-editability makes a few people think twice before they post, I think editability encourages at least as many people to clean up the trash.

OK. Can we just agree that the situation where person A posts something, person B quotes it, person A removes the original, and person B then edits his quotation ... is deeply, seriously contrived and irrelevant, on grounds of it not happening in the real world?

People are intentionally misquoted ALL THE TIME in the real world . . . ESPECIALLY when there's no public record of what they actually said, or such records are obscure and difficult to acquire.

But are they (or will they be) intentionally misquoted all the time in this forum? And at what consequence? A minor misunderstanding at most. Hardly anything that will cause false information to persist.

Also, making posts non-editable doesn't make people accountable for anything. It makes assumed identities accountable which is hardly as useful.

I think it's just as useful.

I agree completely. I only said it to explain part of my next assumption.

I assume what you want is a way of gauging whether a persona on this forum can generally be trusted.

Well you assume wrongly. I already KNOW not to trust most folks on these forums.

What I mean here is: in the case that posts are editable, ideally there should be some way of knowing whether a person has a history of lying or not. I say that this will be taken care of by the collective memory of the community. In a non-editable forum this will be taken care of by documentation. Now that I have clarified what I meant, if this is of no concern to you feel free to ignore it. My argument was merely that I think both types of forum would handle that particular situation equally well.

I find it very annoying to read half way through a thread and discover that the first half became irrelevant as things were cleared up later on.

I find it entertaining. Part of the reason I use forums is for that narrative feel.

Indeed. Your viewpoint supports the way you use the forum, my viewpoint supports the way I use the forum.

 

[Flagg]

I realize that, by this point, the argument has progressed beyond the pure motivation to affect site policy, and into the realm of simply pitting ideologies against one another for sport.


However, I've more or less made up my mind about what will be done in regards to post editing. I've stated it publicly, and I'm not really following this argument anymore, so points argued here won't change my decision.


Having said that, please return to the argument, or not, as you see fit.


-S

 

[Relic]

Well put.


I've made my point and consider the matter debated. Unless something new comes up to spice the discussion I'll probably be stopping here.


Happy posting.

 

[MikeOQuinn]

Re: A note to TSJ

After reviewing your comments, I have come to the conclusion that, while on a number of points I sympathize and agree with you, I cannot fully get behind an argument based primarily upon self-aggrandizement, personal insults, and threats to leave if your requests are not met.

I see agreeing with his points of argument and disagreeing with his delivery as two wholly separate things. Why can't you fully back one and not the other?

I can back the statements that he is making, yes. Backing him in this argument, regardless of the merit of his posts, is not an option. I don't like the possibility that some might be inable to discern support for ideas from support for position and person.

Keep it civil. I'm not against swearing, simply against attempts to verbally bully someone else into acquiescing to your point of view through personal insults and assumptions about your intelligence relative to his.

He won't change. He also won't go away. I'm not saying this as either a defense or a condemnation of his behavior, but as an objective observation based on a long history of his non-compliance to a long history of requests nearly identical to yours.


My earnest advice is to give up trying to persuade him. You're just going to waste a lot of effort. If his style's not your cup of tea, you'll probably be better off just ignoring him.


-S

Thank you for the advice, and rest assured that I'm working on it. I felt it necessary to at least advise him as to my position on the matter, so that when I ignore, wholesale, arguments of his, he will understand my reasoning. Or perhaps that is assuming too greatly upon him, and I will at least have a reference to refer him to in the future.

 

[Persell]

Re: A note to TSJ

After reviewing your comments, I have come to the conclusion that, while on a number of points I sympathize and agree with you, I cannot fully get behind an argument based primarily upon self-aggrandizement, personal insults, and threats to leave if your requests are not met.

Good thing my argument is not based primarily upon any of those things. If you think it is, then you haven't been paying attention to the arguments, but instead have merely been paying attention to all the stuff OTHER THAN arguments that I like to throw into my posts. And that means you're a fucking dumbass, and I could give a shit whether you agree with me. I don't need shitfucks agreeing with me. If you actually think all the self-aggrandizement, personal insults, and threats (all of which I readily admit are in my posts) are parts of my argument, then you're too stupid to have an opinion that counts anyway.

Statements such as

And my enterainment clearly trumps your annoyance, since you're a fucking shitdick.

and

People are generally not as intelligent or as educated as I like to think I am, and as such, they are often mistaken concerning what is or is not relevant. I do not trust them to edit their own work for relevancy, nor do I expect them to trust me in this regard.

do not give me great cause to back your efforts.

Good, because they weren't intended to. The fact that you actually think those were important arguments only speaks to your idiocy.

Likewise, I would recommend that you allow that you will, in fact, have to use some of your precious time to accomplish some things. Like emphasizing text, for example.

If I were shouting, I'd use fucking exclamation points, dumbass. That's what they're for. Some of us KNOW how to use punctuation properly. I use caps in the place of italics of boldface because it's easier to type and generally achieves the same effect.

Laziness wins you no points in my corner.

Were you under the impression that I was TRYING to win points in your corner? Why don't you try stopping all the ad hominems and address my actual arguments? Seems to me like you just don't like ME . . . but you haven't disagreed with a single one of my ARGUMENTS.

I understand that you were an influential and prodigious poster on the old EC. That, however, means nothing here.

No, it means a great deal here because most of the regulars here are the same regulars are from the EC.

Fact of the matter is, if we can survive without Yoshi (I'm not indicating that he has been run off, simply that his efforts on the EC are no longer guiding our progress), we can survive without the mighty TSJ.

But will you? No.

I cannot speak for anyone else here, but for myself, I say that if the current forums upset you so, the door will gladly shake your hand on the way out.

Good thing you DON'T speak for the likes of Stillborn and Joseph and the people who actually hold some sway around here.

Keep it civil.

Fuck you.

I'm not against swearing, simply against attempts to verbally bully someone else into acquiescing to your point of view through personal insults and assumptions about your intelligence relative to his.

Okay, so be against them. Now try responding to any of my actual arguments, shitdick. You CAN'T. Because I'm right and Relic's wrong and that's all there is to it. All the insults in the world won't change that.

 

[Persell]

I took the liberty of skipping the parts where you mistake name-calling and tautologies for arguments.

There were no such parts. The name-calling and tautologies are merely supplements to my arguments, not part of them.

I try to be civil and to stick to the point.

Ask me if I care.

I would expect the same of you

Then ask nicely, and I will gladly comply.

but if it gives you trouble I guess we'll have to get by each our own way.

Doesn't give me any trouble at all. You just have to ask me nicely, fuckwit.

Do forgive me if there are parts of your argument that are lost to me. I have a higher probability of missing the point when I have to manually sift insult from arguments.

That's exactly why I throw them in there . . . to weed out the dumbasses who can't see past them. That, and it amuses me.

This is probably mainly because I don't very much value the opinion of disrespectful people,

Why not? Disrespectful people's opinions are often CORRECT.

simply because it makes it harder for me to respect them in return, and therefore harder for me to focus on the point in question. Maybe I'm just a bad person, I don't know.

I do, and you are.

...where all you do is say something completely irrelevant to the point and/or something that is basically a reiteration of what you said earlier and/or something that merely states an obvious consequence of following your proposal but without any thought given to the relevance or weight of this consequence. Whether you do this to get the last word or as a way of dodging the point I do not know. But I'll just leave it at that since it makes no difference to my point.

As you should. I do it because it's amusing and entertaining. Same reason I do most EVERYTHING I do online.

What is irrelevant to the person who said it may not be irrelevant to all who heard/read it.

This is true. I resubmit my prior point that I don't believe this will harm anything of import to this community (excluding you, perhaps). If the information is important there will be records, and there will be people remembering it. As you state further down, you value the process of documentation. I value the endpoint higher. This is where I think we fundamentally disagree, and I doubt anything will change that any time soon.

Agreed. So when considering whether or not to allow editing, we must call this point a draw and not factor it into our cost-benefit analysis.

Editing removes accountability by giving individuals the ability to decide for themselves whether or not the things they say are relevant. YOU don't get to decide that, Relic . . . the LISTENERS do. Communication is a two-party affair, and editing puts too much power in the hands of the message-deliverer. The recipient has no similar recourse. Editing of the sort proposed for these forums allows ONLY the message-sender to determine what remains in the public record and what does not. This is unfair and antithetical to responsible communication.If something is TRULY irrelevant, the mods (who are presumed to be neutral third parties) will eliminate it. The sender should not have that power.

This is pure opinion,

Which part of it is opinion? That communication is a two-party affair? That sounds awful factual. That unilateral editing puts most power into the hands of the deliverer than the recipient? That's a fact as well. Clearly this isn't PURE opinion since it contains a number of objective facts..

and I agree only with parts of it, and then only in principle. In my experience the positive track record of editable fora by far beats the perception of both lack of fairness and opposition of responsible communication.

Now THAT'S pure opinion. I present opinion backed up by facts. You present opinion backed up by personal experience which no one else can verify. I wonder whose opinion is more worthy of serious consideration? Any guesses?  

Very well, allow me to rephrase:


Precisely. And if they don't think it's relevant anymore, chances are most everyone else won't think so either.

False.

I realize this doesn't take you into account but since we can't make everyone happy the majority vote is still a strong point.

I agree. And I disagree that in most cases when a poster decides his post is irrelevant, most people will agree with him. I simply deny that your claim is true.

People are generally not as intelligent or as educated as I like to think I am, and as such, they are often mistaken concerning what is or is not relevant. I do not trust them to edit their own work for relevancy, nor do I expect them to trust me in this regard.

Fair enough. It's a good thing that you at least trust some of them to come up with something you'd bother to read. ;-)

That's only because I know from experience that they can and often do.

OK, if you say so. I imagine this is because there are a lot of things that you really, really need --- because I doubt this would be the case for most everyone else here.

I could give a shit what you doubt. Your idle, uninformed conjecture means nothing. It lends no strength to your arguments.

Not quite. The general effect of italics and boldface is emphasis. The general effect of caps is SHOUTING.

Not when I use it.

If the rest of your posts were in a friendly tone I would be inclined to think you were just emphasizing but since you have a general rudeness about you I assume you're just shouting.This is also the standard interpretation on the rest of the 'net, so there's hardly any reason to get worked up about it if I fail to magically know that you have been brought up differently than the rest of us in this respect.

Okay. I never said it was an unreasonable assumption on your part . . . I'm just telling you what is actually the case.

President Ford didn't get to take it back when he accidentally revealed the existence of the SR-71 to the American public.

He wasn't posting in a forum.

He was communicating in the public setting, and that is what all online forum posting is.

 And editing something away is not the same as taking it back.

Yes, it is. In fact, it's MORE than taking it back - it's effacing it entirely.

What has been said and noticed by others is in the world even if you claim to have never said it.

And it should remain in place, to be noticed by many more if they should choose to so notice it. Once you say something in a public setting, it belongs to the people.

I have no reason to think that there is a bigger ratio of stupidity on an editable forum than on a non-editable one.

I do. This thread serves as evidence.

I have good reason to think that there is a lower ratio of stupidity on fora where the regulars discourage stupidity and where the community shuns it.

I agree. We can do that with or without editing, so it's irrelevant.

If people say something stupid you can always consider it a part of the narrative, if you will.

I do. That's why I don't want unlimited editing.

 If they remove it don't worry - if it's important to you you'll probably remember, and if you forget it well ... it's gone.

Which is EXACTLY my problem with unlimited editing.

In any case: just as non-editability makes a few people think twice before they post, I think editability encourages at least as many people to clean up the trash.

And? Why is "cleaning up the trash" a good thing? You've failed to motivate that. I think I've sufficiently motivated the claim that people THINKING before they post is a good thing.

OK. Can we just agree that the situation where person A posts something, person B quotes it, person A removes the original, and person B then edits his quotation ... is deeply, seriously contrived and irrelevant, on grounds of it not happening in the real world?

People are intentionally misquoted ALL THE TIME in the real world . . . ESPECIALLY when there's no public record of what they actually said, or such records are obscure and difficult to acquire.

But are they (or will they be) intentionally misquoted all the time in this forum?

Almost certainly.

 And at what consequence?

Dunno, but no good one, that's for sure. I don't want to have to wait and see.

 A minor misunderstanding at most. Hardly anything that will cause false information to persist.

More idle conjecture from the fuckwit. Yeah, THIS is going to convince me . . . you just making wild guesses as to what will or will not happen.

I assume what you want is a way of gauging whether a persona on this forum can generally be trusted.

Well you assume wrongly. I already KNOW not to trust most folks on these forums.

What I mean here is: in the case that posts are editable, ideally there should be some way of knowing whether a person has a history of lying or not. I say that this will be taken care of by the collective memory of the community.

Memory is a poor record. I want documentation.

 In a non-editable forum this will be taken care of by documentation. Now that I have clarified what I meant, if this is of no concern to you feel free to ignore it. My argument was merely that I think both types of forum would handle that particular situation equally well.

Well you're clearly wrong. You think MEMORY is as good a record as DOCUMENTATION? You think people will be held just as accountable when people REMEMBER their actions as when their actions are DOCUMENTED? Are you THAT fucking stupid? This is all CLEARLY false. Hell, anyone who knows how the fucking LAW works knows this is false.

Indeed. Your viewpoint supports the way you use the forum, my viewpoint supports the way I use the forum.

But you're clearly an idiot, so we don't want to many people using the forum the way you do.

 

[Persell]

Re: A note to TSJ

I can back the statements that he is making, yes. Backing him in this argument, regardless of the merit of his posts, is not an option. I don't like the possibility that some might be inable to discern support for ideas from support for position and person.

So you can't bring yourself to back my arguments because you're afraid that someone even more idiotic than you will think you're backing me personally in doing so? Why do you fucking care what any fuckwits who would make a mistake like that think?

Thank you for the advice, and rest assured that I'm working on it. I felt it necessary to at least advise him as to my position on the matter, so that when I ignore, wholesale, arguments of his, he will understand my reasoning.

Well I appreciate that. I also know that your reasoning is horrible, so I really don't care what you do with my arguments. You're clearly a fucking moron, so I think I might rather you ignore me - it will spare me having to consider whether or not to respond to your childlike retorts.

Or perhaps that is assuming too greatly upon him, and I will at least have a reference to refer him to in the future.

And if you ever DO decide NOT to ignore me, when I call you out, you can always come back and delete this post.

 

[ashenphoenix]

Just thought I'd point out another side to the editing debate:


If a poster has fully editable status, (s)he can take his posts and go home (leave forever). This includes any content that (s)he has contributed to the forum.


Now, if a poster were to make threats, and then erased them, the only proof would be by people saying they saw something.


Believe it or not TSJ, Joseph and Still (and some others) are about the most knowledgable people on the subject of Exalted that were on EC¹.


Relic- You're valuable to the community because of your skills with php, and the above people are valuable because of their knowledge of the setting and the mechanics, as well as knowing many odds and ends about everything from philosophy to military ops.


Essentially a community is made of people. Many of the people that are on ECR are from EC¹, and this was established to be a haven for these people, hence its name. This community carries certain norms with it, including sledging as part of arguments. It functioned as a defacto police force in the old forums, and kept out those who didn't understand that it was a rite of passage.


I seem to have wandered from my original point, which was that anyone is, at the moment, free to take their bat and ball and go home. This will damage the community's building (whether it be arguments, or what have you) but hopefully that sense of community spirit that guided us here will live on.


This forum, AFAIK, is not a meritocracy, nor a hierarchy. It is a democracy, and the old group norms are being carried over - those same norms that bound us as a community and helped bind us into a new community so quickly. 1868 posts in 12 days is no mean feat for a re-starting community.

 

[Persell]

Furthermore' date=' if users can edit their posts after the fact, we can have constantly updated lists of, for example, links.  Instead of having to scroll through eight pages of a combination of intelligent discussion and people calling each other dick-horses, all the links, or charms, or whetever the thing being listed that have eventuated from the discussion are cleanly available in one place.  Easy![/quote']
Agreed. I think updates should be possible at all times. I don't think taking retards, who "cheat" in discussions, into account is worth it. And if a line about the post being edited is added after it has been replied to (was that even a sentence?) cheating would be easy to look through. Mistakes are just too annoying.

 

[Persell]

Furthermore' date=' if users can edit their posts after the fact, we can have constantly updated lists of, for example, links.  Instead of having to scroll through eight pages of a combination of intelligent discussion and people calling each other dick-horses, all the links, or charms, or whetever the thing being listed that have eventuated from the discussion are cleanly available in one place.  Easy![/quote']
Agreed. I think updates should be possible at all times. I don't think taking retards, who "cheat" in discussions, into account is worth it. And if a line about the post being edited is added after it has been replied to (was that even a sentence?) cheating would be easy to look through. Mistakes are just too annoying.

Mistakes are a part of communication. I don't find them the slightest bit annoying. In fact, the forum would be a lot more boring without them.