If the slow mode prevents editing setting is enabled, and a user wants to edit their post after the 5 minute editing period, the behaviour is somewhat frustrating. As an example, I missed the 5 minute editing period by a minute or so on this post: How to prevent community content from being used to train LLMs like ChatGPT? - #65 by simon. I wanted to edit the post to add a symbol to a procedure that I outlined. I’d also like to move a couple of sentences to a new paragraph for clarity. It seems that I have to wait for one hour after anyone has posted in the topic to make that change.
For this particular case, the change is trivial, so I’ll let it slide. I’d suggest only enabling the slow mode disables editing setting if users are abusing edits in slow mode posts though. The setting essentially makes it impossible to edit posts in topics where slow mode is enabled.
Edit: tried editing again and realized that the slow mode prevents editing setting completely prevents editing outside of the 5 minute edit grace period.
For me, it’s been working wonderfully for the last two years.
I have 15-minute slow mode enabled on the entire site by default, and it’s really improved the quality of the discussion. Sometimes I raise it to 2h, or even 24h, preventively purely due to the nature of the topic and my expectations about it.
If people are able to edit their posts instead of posting more, it makes it more likely that they’ll go back and review and refine what they said instead of word vomit onto the thread.
Thanks a lot for the continued features on Discourse, it’s really a great gift on humanity and I’m not being facetious.
I wonder if this setting could be refined to only allow a certain size of edit when it’s enabled?
We have the max diff style settings for creating a post revision - perhaps the mechanics of that could be used to only allow small edits to existing posts while slow mode prevents editing is enabled? (though not tied to the max diff settings themselves. Rather a separate value just for this).
That might work. Possibly if someone was going to abuse the ability to edit they’d manage to find a way to do that with minimal edits.
I wonder if the slow mode setting could be applied on a per-user basis. Or even if users who want to argue about something could be forced to move their argument to a separate topic and then be allowed to come back to the main topic with a synopsis of their argument.
How would you know? You’d have to scan the thread looking for red pencils.
I’m thinking the most likely person affected is another party to the conversation, who (after the edit) is made to look stupid, to anyone coming along later and reading the conversation. And the person who makes the edit might look less stupid, because they corrected or removed something.
It’s in a heated argument that you least want people to be rewriting history. That kind of deception undermines community.
Jeff was certain that allowing editing during slow mode would defeat the whole purpose of slow mode, because users would edit their posts to circumvent the timer, turning the thread into a chat room.
But we’ve allowed editing in slow mode for years now, and it’s literally never happened, not even once. If it had, it would be extremely visible to anyone reading the thread.
I speculate that the abuse Jeff imagined has literally never happened on any Discourse forum anywhere at all. It’s a plausible guess, because slow mode still disables editing by default (so admins have to take an action to enable slow-mode editing), and because if it’s never ever happened to us in more than two years, it’s probably never happened to anyone.
symbol to a procedure that I outlined. I’d also like to move a couple of sentences to a new paragraph for clarity.