Philforum Focus Group

There are, of course, sound arguments for limiting edit ability to a relatively brief time. Spammers and individuals changing texts after a series of comments and discussions have been made about it, while actual are usually extremely rare, while the need to edit posted texts (even with a preview and the discipline of copyreading before posting), especially when they are lengthy, seems much more common.

Perhaps a good compromise would be from 15 to 30 minutes. After that, the poster could, of course, request a Moderator make "essential" changes; I would think that Moderators would gladly honor these infrequent request if the changes were not minor and did not substantially alter the meaning of the initial post. (E.g., fixing a broken or wrong link).

thanks-must have missed that...

I can see it being a problem, Robert.

However, there are also benefits to a longer editing time. For instance, stickied threads; in the old forum, some users made lists of books and other material that they regularly updated, and this was really helpful to the community. Not to mention, on other forums threads regarding forum policy are stickied and then are updated when, or if, things change.

So, is there any way that we can compromise? Is it possible to put normal editing at 15 minutes, but also allow moderators to "stamp" posts, allowing them to be edited indefinitely? Or is this not the sort of site that will even be using things like stickied threads (in other words, the site will never utilize a traditional forum layout)?

I had been thinking 10 minutes, but 15 is 'gravy'. Longer than that seems to me a little too long but I'm not adamant about it.

I think we can more than compromise, I want to do an article content type that is canonical, collaboratively edited and with revision history. I think we can do much better than just sticky topics. But more on that later, I don't want to get ahead of myself and right now groups are the big looming priority.

not just you - I very much agree with all of this post

Therein lies an example of editing in time but still flubbing up on the process. (Sorry)

Even though the thread "Methods of Prayer" is the most recently updated of all the threads I'm interested in (there was a post by salima at 4:09 p.m. BST ... and there's another one, at 4:12), it does not appear at all in the list of topics at http://able2know.org/forum/philosophy/.

I've never noticed anything like this before. The thread hasn't been voted down, in any way (I'm still a bit vague about how all that voting stuff works here), and it has a number 8 next to the thumbs-up sign. I'm only able to read it because I routinely save the URLs of all the threads that interest me in an HTML file.

Under what circumstances can a recently updated thread seem to 'disappear' from the forum like this?

I forgot to give the URL! It's http://able2know.org/topic/153002-1

Ah! It doesn't have a 'Philosophy' tag (which makes me wonder why it appeared in the list of recent threads at all).

Can anyone add a tag to the thread as a whole, or does it have to be the originator?

Also, is 'Philosophy' an appropriate tag for such a thread? It's certainly a matter of philosophical interest.

I mentioned this in a different thread. As things are tagged by more people, they end up moving to the five most popular tags attached to the thread, which seems to be based on the number of times a thread has been tagged a certain way, and the general popularity of the tag. Thus, if members do not tag threads they participate in, they can end up in less relevant forums or forums not intended.

Its not that the thread does not have a philosophy tag, it is that it is not one of the top five most popular tags for that thread.

Anyone can tag threads.

In fact, it's a great way for you Philforum folk to take some control here. Go ahead and tag not only your own threads but others' as you think is appropriate.

I tagged the thread mentioned here as "Philosophy," and that's now in the five tags shown.

I think there have been some recent changes to discourage prank tagging, but I'm pretty sure that once a thread is tagged, it stays in that forum whether it's pushed out of the top five or not. That is, once it's tagged as "philosophy," I think it will stay in the philosophy forum even if it's not showing as a top-five tag for that specific thread.

But someone does have to tag it as "philosophy" for it to show up in the philosophy forum.

I very much agree with this as well, KaseiJin.

Actually, the thread gets booted out of a forum if it is not in the top five. It is still listed under that tag, but not the forum.

That's incorrect.

I just tested by looking at an old thread of mine -- I misspelled "Garfunkel" and tagged a thread "Simon and Garfunkle."

Behold, the Simon and Garfunkle forum:

http://able2know.org/user/sozobe/tags/simon_and_garfunkle/

Yet the thread itself does not have a "Simon and Garfunkle" tag:

http://able2know.org/topic/129781-1

(It has a Simon and GarfunkEL tag, but not Simon and GarfunkLE.)

I have had the issue on more than a handful of tags today. The reason why the one thread disappeared out of the philosophy forum is because I had tagged it with a few other things.

did you check all 6,569 pages of thread titles that are in the philosophy forum?

the way things move around here lately, it could have just slid back 5 or 6 pages

You aren't showing me a Simon and Garfunkle forum, but rather the threads you tagged as such.

Can you point me to an example?

I haven't had this problem with "disappearing," and my experiment confirmed that threads are not bumped out of forums based on their tags. If they are tagged with "xyz", they will appear in the "xyz" forum, even if "xyz" is bumped from the five tags that show on the thread.

I think it's very possible that the threads you have in mind were never tagged with "philosophy," or that you didn't find them in the philosophy forum when you looked -- as opposed to them simply disappearing from the forum.

There may be a bug I'm not aware of, of course. But examples would help.

Aha, now we may be getting at the problem.

That is a Simon and Garfunkle forum.

That's what makes a forum, here. You tag something "xyz," and an "xyz" forum is created. Anything else tagged "xyz" also goes in that forum.

Does that make sense?

edit.... hmm, I'm rethinking now. I see that it's in "My tagged topics" rather than the "Simon and Garfunkle forum." So you have a point there.

I'd still like to see examples re: Philosophy though. (And again, just trying to figure this out, might indeed be a problem.)