@balasankarchelamat In some respects, I like the way Reddit handles this. If you edit after about 1 minute, it’s marked as edited. I think that there should also be a timestamp with the date of the latest revision, though. Dropping the likes and comments is too drastic, imho. It’s like punishing the user for editing.
Sometimes make mistakes, it is better to edit a post and not delete it once was shared by other users, to prevent tampering in discuciones good as previous versions in the background to be consulted are preserved, but not in the foreground.
We’ve had post and comment editing in Friendica and Redmatrix for years now with no issues. We do make an edited timestamp visible but don’t provide a version comparison (this could be a privacy issue if the edit was to remove something sensitive - and that needs to be considered).
Ultimately this boils down to a question of trust. Somebody who tries to abuse this facility won’t have many friends left and will see comments on their posts drop to zero in a very short amount of time.
We haven’t seen one instance of abuse. I’m not saying it can’t happen - I’m just saying that perhaps it isn’t as serious a problem as you think it might be.
This is a difficult one. I am really not keen on allowing editing of posts, because of the dangers it brings. And I think it just encourages lazy thinking, just posting whatever comes into your head without thinking it through. We have the preview feature for editing - you can perfect your post before you post it. And, you know what? On a social network, typos rarely matter.
I’m not going to vote on this proposal because the options provide don’t allow for any nuance. I can’t vote in favour, because I could not support such a feature unless it had very solid means of preventing abuse (e.g., in an extreme case, posting a link to some kittens, wait until loads of people say ‘this is wonderful’, and then changing it to a white supremacist hate site). OK, it’s not likely to happen often, and it’s great that it hasn’t happened in Redmatrix, but our networks are still small and largely populated by supporters of the networks rather than people who see them as an opportunity to ‘do their thing’; once a network becomes larger and more mainstream, it becomes a more tempting target for abusers. A far more likely occurrence is misunderstanding, in which an edit done in an unthinking way creates ill feeling in people who had commented before it was edited, even when nothing malicious was intended. Even though this was a mistake, it still created ill-feeling and is likely to make people look less favourably on the network.
These means of preventing abuse/misunderstanding could be in the form of identifying revision history, linking each comment to the revision on which it was made; or preventing edits on posts which have already received interactions (comments, likes, reshares).
I won’t vote conclusively against this feature, but we must not knowingly introduce features which allow for abuse, however unlikely that is to happen. Therefore, editing of posts should only be introduced once all the potential pitfalls have been identified and addressed adequately. Until that stage has been reached, you can consider my vote as being against this feature.
@goob Fortunately, there are tons of models to draw upon. Most forums or social networks I use have some kind of editing feature. Many of them also have some method of indicating that a post has been edited. For example, on Reddit, if your editing occurred after a certain period of time (one minute?), then there’s an asterisk after the timestamp. This draws attention to the edit and indicates that it might not’ve been due to a simple typo (for example).
BoardGameGeek is another forum I often use. Its software is a bit more aggressive. If you have to do any edits at all, within any timeframe, it prominently announces that fact at the bottom of the post. For example:
Last edited Thu Aug. 14, 2014 7:15 PM (Total number of edits: 1)
Posted Thu Aug. 14, 2014 6:30 PM
So, in your example (switching the kittens with the hate site), you could compare the dates on the replies to the “last edited” date on the original post. If the date of the OP is later than the dates on the replies, then it indicates that some shady business may be going on.
I prefer a cross between Reddit and BGG’s editing notifications: update the timestamp, with a discreet yet noticeable indication that it was edited a significant amount of time after posting (say, one or two minutes).
There is still a federation problem. Let’s say someone edits his/hers post but that update needs some days to get to another pod (or never arrives there). A user on that pod comments on the post after the edit but before he sees the edited post. Users from different pods could comment on the same post but all of them could see another version of it.
@steffenvanbergerem : Maybe it is time to change a bit the federation protocol. But first we should finish to separate it in a distinct gem.
I’m not too worried about comments, synchronicity, etc. It’s just a social network, not a rigid communication mechanism. I would argue there are other, higher-priority features that should get developed first, but I have no problem seeing this implemented.
@alexanderzatko : As I said in my vote it is possible to correct a typo by deletion.
Complete deletion should still be possible with the edit feature because it gives you an opportunity to take back something wrong you said.
yes, everyone typos and wants to fix.
I’m afraid I see this vote as meaningless, because it ignores all issues, technical and otherwise, involved in such a feature, and all that is left is a contentless ‘I wish’.
Guess why I don’t even bother to vote 
I’m afraid I see this vote as meaningless
If I remember correctly the vote was needed to keep the Github issue open 
(yes, that is stupid)
I don’t think it’s meaningless. It’s a discussion about project aspirations; and editing posts is something other decentralized platforms (RedMatrix, Tent.io) have been able to implement. There are ways to make something like this work, but it isn’t by any means a small feature.
This is a discussion about whether we should look at things further and give it a try. As there is always room for improvement, I think it’s worth giving it a shot.
By far meaningless… most days, I edit my redmatrix posts because a single word was left out, which changes the entire message, then I say, F@#!, this federated to all my diaspora contacts too, and they won’t get the edit.
@sethmartin editing is not meaningless, that was clear from the vote. Goob just indicated that the vote was meaningless 
I think it’s clear this feature is wanted by the community.
I think it’s clear this feature is wanted by the community.
From the vote, it’s only clear that it’s ‘wanted by the community’ without consideration of all the technical hurdles or even whether it’s a good idea in the first place. Hence why I think the vote (and result) is meaningless.
The vote doesn’t address technical aspects of implementing it, but that’s a separate topic. First it’s good to figure out whether it’s something diaspora* users want or not. I think the majority want it (it’s a frequently requested feature). If you agree that it’s something worth pursuing, then someone should open a thread (or use this one) with proposals of how to implement it.
I have to bump this, maybe one will think about a technical solution for implementing the editing post feature. As previously stated, there are big technical issues which bar us from working on this. However, it’s altogether possible, we just need to figure out a pertinent creative solution
I don’t know much about the technical aspects. I can create a comment and it will federate. Then I can delete the comment, and it will disappear in federation, too. So why couldn’t my edits also federate?