Editing posts after submission

Post by **Pattern-chaser** » June 8th, 2021, 8:20 am

On many fora, it is easy to edit (your own) existing posts. To avoid confusion, the date-time of the most recent edit is automatically included at the bottom of the post. It would be ever-so-nice to have an edit facility here, don't you think? Then I could correct my embarrassing mistakes without needing to re-post, and cluttering up the topic.

Terrapin Station · Post by **Terrapin Station** » June 8th, 2021, 8:23 am

It's ridiculous that you can't edit here, and particularly frustrating for me in that (a) I'm a typo king, and (b) I often post from my kindle, where my kindle apparently thinks I don't make enough typos naturally, so it regularly "autocorrects" me to something wrong, including things like regularly changing "if" to "of" (and vice versa).

Post by **Pattern-chaser** » June 8th, 2021, 10:35 am

I think we're all typo kings, aren't we?

But nothing will happen unless we can convince Scott, I don't think. Do you have a view on this, Scott?

Angelo Cannata · Post by **Angelo Cannata** » July 13th, 2021, 4:24 am

I agree. We might think of the problem that a post might have been corrected, changed, after somebody answered, and this could create confusion, but I’m sure there are solutions to this difficulty, such as automatic notes on the post, saying that it has been amended and when it happened; ability to correct your own posts could also be time limited, for example just for a few minutes, hours or days after it was posted. This seems reasonable to me.

Angelo Cannata · Post by **Angelo Cannata** » July 13th, 2021, 4:28 am

I have seen that a FAQ implies that it is possible to edit a post, but I can’t see how:

How do I edit or delete a post?
Unless you are a board administrator or moderator, you can only edit or delete your own posts. You can edit a post by clicking the edit button for the relevant post, sometimes for only a limited time after the post was made. If someone has already replied to the post, you will find a small piece of text output below the post when you return to the topic which lists the number of times you edited it along with the date and time. This will only appear if someone has made a reply; it will not appear if a moderator or administrator edited the post, though they may leave a note as to why they’ve edited the post at their own discretion. Please note that normal users cannot delete a post once someone has replied.

Steve3007 · Post by **Steve3007** » July 13th, 2021, 4:35 am

I've noticed that some posters do seem to have the ability to edit after posting and it's not entirely obvious how that works. Possibly a setting that moderators have by default or something. It used to be generally possible to edit posts in previous incarnations of this site. I guess it's just some kind of admin setting.