You should have also put it in the Meta category.
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Youâre saying that leaders need to do more following?
Well of course not, public revisions were removed before an actual problem showed up. Thatâs kind of like saying âWell, we took the iron spikes out of the playground based on parental concerns, but they havenât hurt anyone since then so weâre going to put them back.â
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Iron spikes in playground equipment are obviously risky. Visible edit history⌠isnât obviously risky.
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I have visibility into a lot other Discourse instances than this one. The number where Iâve seen public edit history cause a problem? Zero, so far.
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I like having an edit history.
Things evolve over time.
You want your words etched in stone? Etch them in stone.
You donât want them publicly visible? Donât post them publicly.
But donât take away my edit histories because of some vague unfounded itch you have that âtheyâ might be watching you. âTheyâ ARE watching you â and the edit-histories have nothing to do with it. If you want privacy and security, focus on privacy and security, and not on screwing up textual evolution and history.
(not aimed codinghorror; not aimed at anybody, specifically. Kinda.)
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Do you have an actual, practical use for a visible edit history rather than your own vague, unfounded itch?
Titles can/are (just today, even) edited, with no ability to see what previous edit was (noted above).
This changes the URL, making bookmarks and other links dead (notifications update automagically, however).
I have no actual, practical use for emoji - but I donât demand they be removed on the grounds of âprivacy.â This is concern-trolling.
Aw, sez you (and I say that with all the love the Internet can let me express). Changing titles is a different issue. I donât care if those are edited, but I agree that broken links are a bad thing. And as far as I can tell, emoji have nothing to do with privacy.
If you need a viewable edit history, explain why and make your case. If you read this thread, youâll know the reasons why I went to somewhat exhaustive length arguing against the viewable history. And it was a good-faith argument. Hurts my feelers to have it labeled âconcern trolling.â
Fair enough, you deserve a longer response, and I will work on one.
However, I generally feel it has been adequately stated that revisions, boogers and all, have been made public, and multiple methods exist for capturing them - screencaps, web-scrapers, archive.org [or other archive teams] rolling through between edits; removing this edit-history does not stop edits from being archived, but it does stop the ease of use for those that would use them. In other words, you are throwing up barriers to entry for legitimate uses while not stopping other uses (the harm of which has yet to be shown).
Hence: concern trolling, an admittedly hyperbolic label.
NB: this is a preliminary version, and is probably subject to revisions. You may or may not be aware of these.
I will still restate that I have personally looked at and interacted on hundreds of Discourse instances, and the number where I have seen visible edit histories cause any kind of issue?
Zero.
Still zero.
So âconcern driving trolliesâ might be an accurate description here. What real world, actual problem are we fixing by removing the ability for everyone to see edit histories? One that I have never seen â and Iâd be in a position to know more than anyone.
(Some features do indeed cause real, documented problems on some sites. For example, the ability for trust level 3 users to edit titles and category. Thatâs been observed in the wild a few times, and weâre thinking of adding mandatory edit reason input in response. But visible edit histories causing a problem? Zip, zero, nada, bupkis, never been seen.)
Iâm sure nobody would abuse that here.
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Shouldnât be huge, though, as the boing category is for staff only. So only non-boing topics can be affected.
Oh, wow. I totally forgot about the Boing category.
Anything happening in there lately?
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The only reason I can imagine edit revisions being useful is to delineate when likes were applied to a comment.
I imagine that edits within the first 4 or 5 minutes would still be considered âdraftâ and not recorded as proper edits, so the ability to fine tune a comment without people seeing the mistakes common to a quick blurb wouldnât hang around to potentially embarrass.
I can imagine that an edit history would make trolling ever so slightly more difficult, removing the ability to construct a likeable comment then change it to drek after attracting some likes. However, it occurs to me that the community here is fairly resilient to such misuse without the history being visible.
I have seen the tactic used on other sites, and in fact it was one of the main reasons I left one other community in particular. In that community, people would either change their argument to force a negative interpretation on what you had written or even just delete the substance of the comment if they had been served a particularly thorough rinsing.
âŚI sometimes hesitate, and mostly try never, to add or delete content once it has attracted even one like, I might be less inclined to follow that pattern if I knew people could see what had happened in-comment. But thatâs the extent of my imagination on the topic.
Edit (in draft)
Just realised I lambasted the site by name above but canât make an edit revision to help them retain a shred of dignity.
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