I would like to suggest a change to the time/conditions limits on editing one’s own posts in the discussion forums here.
It looks like there is currently no time limit on the window within which a poster (of thread starters or replies) can edit their own posts. This ability to edit seems to include erasure of an entire post, and editing of the thread title.
There also seems to be no limit on editing one’s own post even after other forum users have replied to the post or reacted to the post.
These unlimited edits are problematic.
Such edits can cause a reaction to be appended to a post that the original reactor did not and possibly would not react to; if you post ‘leos are the best starter reptile’ and I react positively to that, but you subsequently change your post to read ‘leos are the worst starter reptile’, your edit has forced me to react in a way that was not my intent.
Similarly, such edits can make replies to the original content seem off-base or non-sensical. This can make repliers look incorrect or just plain dumb in ways that those repliers don’t deserve. There is some ability for repliers to quote content they’re replying to, but this both gets a little silly sometimes and also it seems that the forum software doesn’t allow for quotes of entire posts.
Edits that remove large blocks of content, well, remove large blocks of content from the forum archives. Archived discussions are valuable – more so the longer they’re viewable, since there are many more eyes on the content over time. The idea of public discussions is that they’re public; deleting their central content makes them effectively private.
Edits that remove or fundamentally change content indicate that the original post was not made in good faith. There’s a lot to unpack in this observation, and I’m happy to try to elaborate, but I think the idea that deleting content simply because it has ceased to be useful to the person who posted it has a scent of fraudulence to it.
I suggest that self-edits on one’s own posts have a limited time window in which they can be undertaken. Some time period that enables proofreading of a post, and subsequent corrections for grammar/spelling/clarity, is valuable. If edit window is based on time, I suggest 30 minutes after the post was submitted.
Alternately, allowing self edits for any period of time up until the post is replied to (directly, not just another reply to the thread) or reacted to would be another option that eliminates or at least greatly reduces the problems with unlimited self-edit windows.
Edits that are desired outside these limits could of course be made by the moderators by request of the poster. This would of course potentially add to the work load of moderators, but my own experience moderating indicates that these requests are exceedingly rare.