Recommendation about editing last instead of posting

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pcallahan
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Recommendation about editing last instead of posting

Post by pcallahan » March 15th, 2019, 2:37 pm

I don't want this to come across as complaining. I'm curious if anyone has a strong opinion either way.

I have seen the recommendation, usually followed (as I try to), that if you are posting after your own previous post, you should edit that instead of writing a new post. This certainly makes sense for afterthoughts that come in a few minutes, and I understand the overall rationale. I have broken the recommendation a few times by accident, and other times intentionally because more than a day had passed and I felt that my update was logically something new, not really a postscript to the last post.

The problem as I see it is that edits do not show up as activity on the thread, so anyone scanning a thread for new comments will never know if you had (e.g.) a new result on a long-running search and want to say something else. Such threads may have some silent readers ("lurkers" as we used to say on Usenet; does anyone use that term anymore?) and this edit policy is a recipe for making threads look inactive when there is actually one person continuing to contribute.

So I want to stick to policy and not abuse the website just to get attention. I wonder if this update issue is considered a feature or bug, or whether it bothers anyone else. If there were a way to have recent edits show up as activity on the thread, that would solve the problem.

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dvgrn
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Re: Recommendation about editing last instead of posting

Post by dvgrn » March 15th, 2019, 3:52 pm

pcallahan wrote:I have seen the recommendation, usually followed (as I try to), that if you are posting after your own previous post, you should edit that instead of writing a new post. This certainly makes sense for afterthoughts that come in a few minutes, and I understand the overall rationale. I have broken the recommendation a few times by accident, and other times intentionally because more than a day had passed and I felt that my update was logically something new, not really a postscript to the last post.
Occasional deliberate double-posting with interesting new material seems fine to me. As long as you know that people subscribed to a thread or board will get a notification email pointing them to your new post, and that's exactly what you want to happen, then you're probably doing double-posting right (unless you start getting objections).

I didn't invent the policy about editing instead of double-posting, but I think the rule was intended more as a reminder that "This is an academic forum, not a chat or microblogging platform" -- i.e., the forums aren't intended for adding new posts for every tangential thought or random joke that comes into your head, whereas it's probably fine to edit things like that into previous posts.

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pcallahan
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Re: Recommendation about editing last instead of posting

Post by pcallahan » March 15th, 2019, 4:17 pm

dvgrn wrote:As long as you know that people subscribed to a thread or board will get a notification email pointing them to your new post, and that's exactly what you want to happen, then you're probably doing double-posting right (unless you start getting objections).
That's a point I had not considered. I think I'm not subscribed to anything and I just glance over to see what has changed. It would be an improvement if "last edit" could propagate up to the thread heading, but it might not be configurable on phpBB. I will feel free to add a ping post if enough time passes on something I think deserves attention (used sparingly of course).

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Re: Recommendation about editing last instead of posting

Post by gameoflifemaniac » March 19th, 2019, 1:53 pm

I do a new post instead of editing the previous so people can notice me.
I was so socially awkward in the past and it will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Code: Select all

b4o25bo$o29bo$b3o3b3o2bob2o2bob2o2bo3bobo$4bobo3bob2o2bob2o2bobo3bobo$
4bobo3bobo5bo5bo3bobo$o3bobo3bobo5bo6b4o$b3o3b3o2bo5bo9bobo$24b4o!

Shaos
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Re: Recommendation about editing last instead of posting

Post by Shaos » April 19th, 2020, 4:13 pm

pcallahan wrote:
March 15th, 2019, 4:17 pm
dvgrn wrote:As long as you know that people subscribed to a thread or board will get a notification email pointing them to your new post, and that's exactly what you want to happen, then you're probably doing double-posting right (unless you start getting objections).
That's a point I had not considered. I think I'm not subscribed to anything and I just glance over to see what has changed. It would be an improvement if "last edit" could propagate up to the thread heading, but it might not be configurable on phpBB. I will feel free to add a ping post if enough time passes on something I think deserves attention (used sparingly of course).
Actually if intention of that strange rule was to reduce number of notifications then it was just wrong, because every notification e-mail says:
You are receiving this notification because you are watching the topic
"blablabla"
at "ConwayLife.com". This topic has received a reply by NAME since your
last visit. No more notifications will be sent until you visit the topic.
No more notifications will be sent until you visit the topic!

So multiple postings will NOT generate a lot of notifications - only 1st one will...

BTW I'm an admin of my own phpBB forum since 2003 (Total posts: 68231 | Total topics: 4277 | Total members: 3538) so I kind of know how forums usually work :roll:

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Re: Recommendation about editing last instead of posting

Post by dvgrn » April 19th, 2020, 4:56 pm

Shaos wrote:
April 19th, 2020, 4:13 pm
So multiple postings will NOT generate a lot of notifications - only 1st one will...
Well, here's the scenario that makes the rule slightly less silly:

For topics I'm interested in, I'll often go immediately to look at that first notification. So then if somebody keeps posting new messages that are really just short inconsequential continuations of the previous message, I'll keep getting more notifications and thinking that there's something new and different to go look at.

So this kind of chat-room type behavior can generate a lot of these pointless notifications after all. That's more the type of situation that the "strange rule" is designed for: one line per new post, with not really much reason to draw everyone's attention to each new microthought.

A case can certainly be made that your recent double post was a situation where two posts are better than one, for exactly the reasons that you mentioned there. The rule is mostly in place so that when people start treating the main part of the forums like a sandbox or chat room, there's something we can point to and ask them politely to stop.

Once new users show some basic awareness of the existence of the rule, and maybe say "New topic:" or some such at the top of double-posts to show that they're thinking about it and making a deliberate decision, probably nobody will bother them about occasional justified consecutive messages after that.

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Re: Recommendation about editing last instead of posting

Post by Shaos » April 19th, 2020, 5:09 pm

I see your point

Now a little of common sense - as correctly noted above if you add something at the end of the last message it will NOT be reflected in the list of topics, so updated topic will go to the bottom of the page and eventually will "die" on the next page of the list, because nobody will notice any new updates that user does according to rules and nobody will comment and user will not be able to create new post because it's not allowed. So what makes sense is if update is written on ANOTHER day then it should be OK to post it as a new message even if previous message was from the same user - this will move topic up in the list of topics and it will not disappear unnoticed (as most topics do I guess if this rule is enforced).

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Re: Recommendation about editing last instead of posting

Post by dvgrn » April 19th, 2020, 5:27 pm

Shaos wrote:
April 19th, 2020, 5:09 pm
So what makes sense is if update is written on ANOTHER day then it should be OK to post it as a new message even if previous message was from the same user - this will move topic up in the list of topics and it will not disappear unnoticed (as most topics do I guess if this rule is enforced).
That's fine by me -- again, in the case where an actual new subtopic is being added, or some new information is available that the people following the thread might be interested in. Inconsequential one-line additions are still much better off being edited in to the previous post.

That's just my opinion, though; other people might feel more strongly that they like the rule the way it is. This thing about keeping a thread high on the topic list can be a little hard to gauge sometimes. There are cases where there's pretty much only one contributor to the thread, and the topic is kind of a "newbie topic" that just plain isn't as interesting as it seems to the serial poster. Forum users in general really would like cluttery threads like this to drop off the list and get out of the way of the "good stuff"... and the no-double-posting rule does a decent job of helping this to happen.

Here again, "I resemble that remark": there are quite a few threads where I've tried to get other people interested in some ridiculously esoteric topic, and have failed abjectly even after multiple posts. I definitely don't make updates to these threads every day, though -- more like every few months, hopefully at times when there's nothing much else going on anyway.

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Re: Recommendation about editing last instead of posting

Post by Shaos » April 19th, 2020, 5:33 pm

I see, so even though this rule is written kind of strictly it's still possible to break that rule occasionally without serious consequences :wink:

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Re: Recommendation about editing last instead of posting

Post by Hunting » April 20th, 2020, 12:59 am

A minor point: If others can't see your edit, then that means no one cares about that thread anymore.

Shaos
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Re: Recommendation about editing last instead of posting

Post by Shaos » April 20th, 2020, 3:04 am

Hunting wrote:
April 20th, 2020, 12:59 am
A minor point: If others can't see your edit, then that means no one cares about that thread anymore.
Regular people don't open topic that is not marked as updated in the list :)

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yujh
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Re: Recommendation about editing last instead of posting

Post by yujh » April 21st, 2020, 12:49 am

Shaos wrote:
April 20th, 2020, 3:04 am
Hunting wrote:
April 20th, 2020, 12:59 am
A minor point: If others can't see your edit, then that means no one cares about that thread anymore.
Regular people don't open topic that is not marked as updated in the list :)
I’m not a regular person?
We also should have a number by our user names like:
Edits:9999999.
Rule modifier

B34kz5e7c8/S23-a4ityz5k
b2n3-q5y6cn7s23-k4c8
B3-kq6cn8/S2-i3-a4ciyz8
B3-kq4z5e7c8/S2-ci3-a4ciq5ek6eik7

Bored of Conway's Game of Life? Try Pedestrian Life -- not pedestrian at all!

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Re: Recommendation about editing last instead of posting

Post by Shaos » April 21st, 2020, 1:35 am

I can imagine some special individuals who is visiting every topic just to see if something was added to the last post, but majority of people don't do that :mrgreen:

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Re: Recommendation about editing last instead of posting

Post by yujh » April 21st, 2020, 2:04 am

Shaos wrote:
April 21st, 2020, 1:35 am
I can imagine some special individuals who is visiting every topic just to see if something was added to the last post, but majority of people don't do that :mrgreen:
Just like me...
Rule modifier

B34kz5e7c8/S23-a4ityz5k
b2n3-q5y6cn7s23-k4c8
B3-kq6cn8/S2-i3-a4ciyz8
B3-kq4z5e7c8/S2-ci3-a4ciq5ek6eik7

Bored of Conway's Game of Life? Try Pedestrian Life -- not pedestrian at all!

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