Request: system edits on a post should not display the "edited" icon

We have the “downloaded local copies of images” setting enabled, and just realized that in some cases this causes the “edited” (pencil) icon to display at the top of the post.

In our experience the “edited” icon is useful for seeing at a glance when a user has actually changed the substance of a post.

For behind the scenes housekeeping stuff like making image URLs local, invisible to most users, I think this indicator should be suppressed. Maybe some cases where a system edit should be visible, but for this local image thing in particular, or similar invisible edits, seems ideal to not display it as “edited”.

5 Likes

Search settings for " disable system edit notifications"

4 Likes

Ah thanks Jay. Just checked and we actually do have that setting enabled already!

Maybe that setting isn’t being respected for showing the edit icon as well (though I think it should be). Example here, shows the edited / pencil icon for system edit:

1 Like

No edit icon showing here. Maybe a screenshot would. :wink:

Huh weird I see it on both desktop and mobile, logged in or anon. Here are screenshots from mobile.

1 Like

iPad Chrome I could not only see the pencil icon, I also could see the revision.

Troy has a shield. Can you see a different example of a member not in that group?

2 Likes

Sorry, I was looking at the Oneboxed link here. When I went to your site I did see the revision. The videos themselves were highlighted to show something was changed in the data by the system. All text is identical - no changes. The system did something when downloading the video, but no edit pencil should be showing.
And yes, Troy has a shield after his name.

1 Like

Wanted to follow up as this continues to be a minor annoyance. Very much seems like system edits should not show the edit indicator (pencil icon). Particularly when disable system edit notifications is enabled, but perhaps even as a general case regardless of that setting.

We’re finding it jarring to see that orange “edited” icon when there’s zero actual content change, just a behind the scenes URL rewrite.

(Also, not sure how to see how often this occurs, as these system edits don’t seem to add a Staff Actions > ‘post edit’ log item, unless I’m missing something!)

Discourse team, any thoughts, do you support the suggested change here?

3 Likes

That is a content change, though.

1 Like

I think you know what I mean! Yes there’s a change in the literal diff of the raw posts. No there is no change in the ultimate displayed post content.

If something results in a change that’s essentially invisible, it’s not useful to draw attention to it. It’s not even a different image, it’s just “this image is now hosted in a different place” — meaningless change for anyone reading, can only add confusion.

4 Likes

I think so too! I don’t like being drawn in by the slightly anxiety-inducing orange pencil icon just to see this:

image

image

IMO, we shouldn’t show the pencil at all and handle it internally (housekeeping). If a user happens to care about the URLs, they can automatically learn that Discourse will pull hot-linked images. If that is too much of a change, we should change the default color for these from orange to grey at the very least but that might not be easy to implement because the colors are probably determined by how recently an edit was made :thinking:

image

3 Likes

I thought that there was a system setting for that, though I can’t find it on my phone.

2 Likes

I’m aware about the setting but I received that notification even when it was enabled :thinking:

image

3 Likes

Possibly related to @sam’s recent edit notifications fix?

2 Likes

Will have a look later today

3 Likes

Wait the intention was never to disable the revision, the setting is 100% about disabling the notification per:

This is working, I tested on local:

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/5cf6984a1a1096d85c3edac22a78c4a20dbc7cb4/app/services/post_action_notifier.rb#L100-L100

If we want to expand this site setting so it is, I guess we could add:

hide system edit revisions : Hide revisions created by the system when dowloading hotlinked images.

Up to you @codinghorror if you want to fiddle with this, but as it stands the pencil is 100% by design, what is suppressed is the notification the user gets about the revision.

5 Likes

Oh no, I meant to say that I didn’t like the orange edit revision on the post. I can confirm that I wasn’t notified so that’s working as expected - apologies for the confusion!

My request above and the ones above it are for the hide system edit revisions behaviour you mentioned and they have nothing to do with notifications.

5 Likes