A user reached out about not being able to edit flagged posts. Discourse by default has a 10-minute “no edits” delay after being flagged, presumably so the flagged user can “stop and think about what they’re saying” when cooler heads will prevail.
However, instead what I’ve tended to see is users, once realizing they can’t edit their post, posting new posts that may risk further derailing conversations. I also find this generally unnecessary since the system will only let you edit a flagged post once anyway - if you are subsequently reflagged, the post is locked.
Given this, I’ve removed this “cooldown delay” entirely. If you found yourself unable to edit a flagged post in the past immediately after it being flagged, this should no longer occur.
As an additional reminder, a post being flagged is not the same as a post being reviewed by moderators. We are not always here, and most of us are volunteering our time to moderate - please give us some time to review flags!
But I’ve had posts flagged for moderation and am unable edit those. When I’ve reviewed them myself and taken an educated guess at why they were automatically flagged as such, my only course was to copy the text, delete the whole post and then create a new one which I could then edit before posting. (And on each occasion - 2 or 3 times - I have been correct in my guess as to what caused the automatic flagging, and been able to repost an edited version.)
So, unless I’ve misunderstood some part of the different processes/statuses of flagged posts, it seems that being able to edit posts that are automatically flagged for moderation ought also to be allowed now.
That’s a different issue. This is specifically about posts that are flagged by the community versus one automatically held for moderation.
We have several systems including wordlists, Akismet, and the Perspective API that might automatically hold your post when you post it until a moderator can review it. Currently you can’t edit those posts, though I’m pretty sure the reasons are technical (they’re in a special queue), not policy-based like the flag cooldown.
That risks folks getting locked out of conversations using flags offensively, and would ned to be implemented carefully IMHO.
