I came across an option to use silent editing for post titles and also body of posts that is only visible to staff.
Currently, when anyone, poster or moderator, makes an edit it can be seen in the revision history.
However, there may be times when staff want to edit something, for example remove personally identifiable information in a post without it showing in the revision history.
Another example, might be spelling or grammar. I am talking about light fixes without drawing attention to it.
Is there such an option and where/how do we enable it?
Just a gentle nudge to update and benefit from all the new features as well as crucial security updates.
For this, I’d separate those example into two distinct pots and handle them differently.
The short answer is that there isn’t really a ‘silent edit’ function as such. When you edit a post a notification is sent to the person whose post it is even if you hide the revision.
The ‘hide revision’ option Nate is referring to is in the post revision modal (the edit history) and can only be applied after the edit has been made:
If you hide a revision then non-staff will not be able to see that part of the edit history and the edit count for them will also be reduced by 1 as well.
However, from a UX perspective, the user will receive a notification saying there’s been an edit, but when they click on it to go to the post/edit history it will tell them they don’t have access to see it.
For typos and whatnot I tend to use the edit info box to add some extra detail on why I edited (if it’s not obvious, or if it’s a user that may not be familiar with the community’s approach to edits). It’s a little tucked away but you can find it here:
So I would tend to leave those edits visible. Most people don’t mind a typo tweak and would understand why an edit had been made.
For the removal of PII I would actually go one step further than hiding the revision (as well as sending a PM to the user telling them I’d removed sensitive information). There’s a hidden site setting that allows posts and post revisions to be permanently deleted rather than soft-deleted (that is ‘removed completely’ v ‘hidden from non-staff’).
Permanently deleting posts is an admin-only function, though deleting post revisions can be done by moderators. When you hide a post revision an extra option turns up for ‘delete revisions’. This will completely wipe the edit history for that post.
I am not familiar with these? Where did you find that info?
I don’t recognise them. I can’t find them in an admin search, and a meta search for either only brings up your post. If you give me some extra context about where you see them it might fire a neuron.
brings up an input box where you can type your edit reason, and this will be displayed in the edit history for added context.
I can’t find them in an admin search, and a meta search for either only brings up your post. If you give me some extra context about where you see them it might fire a neuron. 