Request for the Edit function moratorium to be lifted. (1 Viewer)

[Fritz Nilsen]

Having recently been made aware of the practise of removing the edit function after a set period of time, I hereby ask that you reconsider on the basis of the following:

1. It restricts my access to content I have published myself and that I consider myself to have ownership of, be it written word or images. I consider this highly problematic and to be an infringement on my ownership rights.

2. It breathes a climate of less openness on the forums. With the knowledge that content cannot be edited in the future, I find myself less inclined to actively participate in discussions or upload content. I am sure I am not alone in this.

3. I consider the removal of the edit function to have far more drawbacks than benefits. There are numerous "legitimate" reasons why a member would need to edit posts even years after they were made. I admit I am not fully aware of what precipitated this decision, but I consider a blanket "lock" on all forum content to be an overreaction.

4. With the recent migration to new forum software, I find it necessary to update links and/or change formatting of many of my posts. The lack of an "edit" function prevents me from aiding you in the maintenance of forum content.

I ask that you consider these arguments and kindly ask that I be allowed to administrate my own information.

Regards,
Fritz Nilsen, forum member

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Fritz,

The decision to restrict member edits to a 24 hour period (which is more generous than many other forums allow) was a difficult but necessary step for us to take.

That decision came about when we saw a disturbing amount of members deleting and/or changing volumes of content that they had posted. When you edit or remove content it often disrupts the flow of a particular thread.

When disputes between members occurred, we had individuals rapidly adjusting their posts to cover up things they had said.

Unless you are maintaining a list, I don't agree that there is a necessity to provide unlimited editing privileges to any member that asks for it. We have already seen the negative results of allowing such practice.

As far as formatting is concerned, if the format of a message you have posted has become disrupted due to the migration, all I can tell you is that you are not alone. We aren't allowing every member to go back and reformat old content.

If at any time there is an old post that you absolutely need to edit, you can contact any one of the staff privately. We will be happy to work with you.

Just in case you feel we are not being sympathetic to your request, I want to again stress that this was a very difficult decision to make based on quite a few "rogue members" who over the course of several months decided they wanted months of content edited or completely removed. It was getting completely out of hand.

I am on quite a few other forums myself and most all of them only have a very brief editing time limit. Most don't even give the 24 hours that we generously provide, and I think in that amount of span, a poster has a substantial amount of thought time to change their mind.