AstonJ suggests implementing an edit log feature, viewable by admins, to track post edits, title edits, re-categorization of topics, and more. This would help identify edit-spam, recognize helpful members, and distribute workload among mods.
However, codinghorror points out that edit-spam can be handled by adjusting the editing grace period and post edit time limit in site settings. codinghorror also suggests reducing the edit period to 1 day or lower to address the issue.
AstonJ counters that reducing the edit period could inconvenience genuine users and emphasizes the importance of the feature for recognizing helpful members.
cpradio suggests using a data explorer query to achieve this, but AstonJ believes the feature would be more useful as a dedicated page.
codinghorror proposes a page showing recent edits, and codinghorror later discovers an existing “post edits” report on the admin dashboard.
markvanlan and darkpixlz suggest alternative implementations, including adding a clickable link to view a user’s post edits and displaying the edit history directly on the user’s profile page.
A list of all edits viewable by Admin (perhaps sortable by member).
I think this would be useful for some very good reasons:
Help keep a lookout for edit-spam
Help see which members are being helpful (those adding tags, re-categorising Topics, editing titles, etc) (and so to see who would make good moderators)
Help ensure workload between Mods is equal
What should be logged?
Perhaps…
Post edits
Title edits
Re-categorisation of Topics
Appending/editing of tags
Post deletions
Maybe if time allows (or this proves a success), go further, and add logs for:
Topics that have been pinned/unpinned
Wikis (made/unmade)
Anything else that would allow an admin to quickly overview what’s been going on on the forum
I think this would be very useful for large companies/busy admins in particular
This is usually handled by reducing the editing grace period (defaults to 5 minutes / 300 seconds) and post edit time limit (defaults to 60 days / 86400 minutes) in the site settings. I see absolutely no reason for a bunch of other custom features when those site settings control it perfectly.
Also note that thanks to @gerhard people who flagged a post to threshold are now notified when the flagged post was edited.
Not sure what you mean Jeff - how is it handled when they have 60 days to come back and edit their older posts and nobody is notified of such edits?
Our edit period is 12 hours and they sneak in even with that. But edit spam was just one aspect - being able to see who’s regularly doing housekeeping tasks around the forum would be incredibly handy.
Even that is too low and too much of an inconvenience for genuine users - they shouldn’t have to suffer. As I mentioned though, edit spam is just one aspect. Having these kind of logs makes it super easy for Admins to get an overview of which members are ‘helping out’ i.e potential mod material.
I hadn’t seen the data explorer plugin, however I still think this is one of those features that once you have, you would find difficult to live without (if you have a busy or relatively busy forum) particularly if it is expanded to have a similar (configurable) page for moderators.
Where the 20 is clickable to link to a list links to posts, or pop open a modal with links to the posts. I don’t think we want to build a whole UI to view post revisions, we can just link to the posts.
