Appreciate this discussion; long reply but maybe useful to someone, or I can get challenged and see other ways for when we reopen.
Experiment: We ended up shortening the editing window to something ridiculous like 60 seconds (mainly for typos),
and actively reinforced that you should not post till you’re confident you want that message to go to all readers instantly.
Need to edit after the fact? Now forced to openly (maybe quote your original in a) comment to clarify or amend, which can notify followers so everyone who invested has a chance to be on the same page about changes.
Because some of our members tend to read and reply quickly, this ensured existing replies reflected what they read in the moment, not disconnected because of an edited OP version that showed up hours after the replies.
Silly example: John originally posted that people who put mustard on hamburgers are [insert inflamed opinion], and people replied to THAT… later John has remorse and edits that he simply doesn’t like mustard… so then the replies are all out of context… later readers get confused, and moderators are picking through edited versions to figure out what’s going on which felt like work for the sake of work. Leave the replies? Comment to clarify community intention/policy? Ugh it just never went well for anyone and ultimately eroded mutual trust
We don’t want John to stop posting; we just want to create a container where there are gentle natural consequences for posting impulsively that may help John override impulse over time
But like you said sometimes John can’t, and one version of John actually asked for help
So we also set low enough flag/hide threshold so Johns supporters could simply tag team to hide his post for moderator approval.
Not perfect, and I’m making an imaginary case here mixing from some real ones
but in practice, shortening the editing window did a lot to clarify discussion and reduce impulsive posting. It slowed the roll and forced folks to notice they had to make a comment to rephrase or clarify, which is “work” and naturally most people want to avoid work and calling attention to their mistakes. (They also got to see that everyone makes mistakes and there’s no actual shame in correcting them openly since we all had to do it)
they started to take a little more time with the original posts, and John now feels a lot better about his approach and results, sometimes even messages mods privately before posting, to help sort his thoughts a little (support we are happy to offer), and then he posts something really powerful to the group. Confidence up, regret down, real connections growing.
Remaining impulsive writing that’s potentially embarrassing, disruptive etc: we still moderate that and check in w OP or let members hide it, but it’s far less work now than discovering and reviewing all those edited messages to make sense of replies and sentiment
We can be forgiving, understanding, annd accommodating while still having boundaries on behalf of the community as a whole.
When approaches are adjusted like that to meet the needs of your real community and the individuals who enliven it, boundaries and consistency build trust and clarity, not resentment.
We try to take every new instance as a learning opportunity rather than a disciplinary issue, unless the poster is blatantly resistant or ignoring or otherwise not at least attempting to find mutually workable solutions.
Every community might have a different sense of what’s our lane and what’s the poster’s lane. So we simply adjust policies and mod strategy based on real world and reasonable workload for moderators and admins. What we allow or encourage, members will come to expect…
They’re looking to us to set the stage they can play in. Some 80-90% lurkers watch and only start posting after they see how we handle uncomfortable scenarios.
We also try to get feedback after incidents and allow the culture to shift a bit based on the current body of members and their needs, vs “what we’ve always done”
Will leave it here. Best wishes finding your own sweet spot with this 