“postponing the problem” It is about solving the user problem with a bicycle so it can avoid walking. Then we can see how to provide a car. But in the mean time the user is not stuck with is feets.
Nope, postponing is about proposing the user to take him on your back and hoping that you won’t feel any backache one day…
Solving the problem is improve the federation to let it do what it should do. So yes, it’s a bit tougher, but it’s the right solution. Timestamp is a bad one.
We should not patch diaspora* to provide functionnalities while the good solution would be to make things right. Because one day we will have to deal with a spaghetti code, a lasagna of code and nobody will have the willing to maintain it anymore…
It does no good to make little bits here and, other way … It’s better to focus efforts, do something solid and the proposed update instead of doing small patch from time to time.
What I usually do (might be the dumb thing) is to delete the post (usually typos or I forgot to put something or something equally stupid) and then re-post after cleaning or adding it up. I do wish there was an edit post but do understand that it would need some sort of patching of messages and could quickly be convulated for pod admins.
I have no idea when I do delete posts, are the posts eventually removed from other federated network (within the diaspora fold at least) or do they remain forever ?
I’m totally on board with doing things right the first time, and if the pending-timeout thing has no support so be it. But I think there’s two debates that need to be had now:
Is it really a good and desirable thing, coding effort aside, to let people edit their historical comments at any time? I don’t think it is, for reasons I’ve outlined above, but perhaps I’m in the minority on this.
If we decide it is, then we can debate about how that can be correctly done.
A recent proposal showed that a majority support a feature that allows editing of posts.
Can someone point me to that proposal? I just don’t understand the rationale behind needing to be able to edit old posts. Maybe the other discussion will clear that up for me.
I wish it was not closed, I would have agreed to the proposal. I didn’t like the fact that only 3% were able to state their position and the poll was closed in less than 24 hrs. if I understand the loomio timeline.
@shirish with only on agree and one (unfair imho) block, the proposal is not ready to be accepted. Maybe it need to be discussed futher more, refined? May be its the concept of doing the right thing that need to be discussed? It seems to me to that the intent of the proposal was not fully understood by some people. And some advices feels like some people did not even read the discussion or try to understand the point.
But I also admit that I’m not good at communicating stuff.
Veni, vidi, failed. It’s your turn to try. Run another proposal.
Isn’t possible editing posts yet?
If I commit a mistake the unique solution is to delete it and rewrite? There is anyway to copy the markdown formatting of a published post? It is an unpleasant work to format again all the message that you want to republish in a correct version!
If you have any doubt, copy the raw markdown version of your post before submitting it.
The best way to avoid errors is to preview your post until you are certain everything is correct!
There have been some recent developments that might mean that an editing feature becomes more likely, but there are no definite plans to include it. Of course the usual situation remains the same: if anyone in the world cares enough about this feature to write the code, it can be included!
there’s information that may have been unknown to a poster at the time of writing a post that would be best included in op
there are mistakes that happen in posts which get a lot of attention that corrections made to a repost after deletion would not get, where a retraction and acknowledgement of the mistake in the op is the general ethical solution already
professional journalists with professional copy editors and proofreaders still have mistakes get through to a published story, there is no level of “make sure there are no mistakes” that will make up for the lack of edits in post
addendum:
say you post something and you find yourself drowning in harassment in the comments. currently, you can ignore users, which given a critical mass becomes a futile exercise; or you can delete the op. there isn’t a way to change privacy after the fact to keep discussion going in a circle of your choosing – you can’t shut out the commenters by locking down a thread. that’s another benefit to edits.
re: implementation: version control systems provide a good example already – differences are published and merged with the prior version to make a new version and the change is logged. it’s an old problem with an old solution that works.
I also want to edit posts. When will this be done? It is something that all other major networks have! These limitations are something that make it much harder to bring more people to Diaspora, since the person will (commonly) use it just because I use here, and I pointed… and in the first uses the person discover several simple limitations: “Cannot even edit posts? Facebook have that even for the simple mobile interface!”
This discussion started in 2014, and the situation today, 2018/01/14, seem to be exactly the same. Sad.
Someone who wants this feature has to work on it. It really is as simple as that.
Diaspora is an open-source project, which means that anyone in the world can contribute to it. It’s not like a proprietary centralised network in which users have to wait for the company that owns the software to implement features. If you want a feature, make it, or find someone who can make it for you. Or you can add to the bounty on this issue, to encourage someone to work on it. There are many ways to help the project to get the features you want.
Work on it might be raising the money to have someone else work on it.
I agree that this really needs work ASAP. From what has been written above is there enough information to write pseudo code an estimate the number of hours involved?
At least so we have some sort of base for the discussion. Is it 1,000 hours of time for someone already highly engaged in the Diaspora code or 10 hours for someone with reasonable experience in using Ruby?
Maybe have a bounty on some issues like this. Put some money up to make it happen.
