# Vanished 'edit'



## Necsus

Hello, mods! Do you know why the 'edit' button has disappeared from my posts? I can't no longer change or correct them...


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## Jana337

It disappears after 24 hours. You should be able to edit new posts. 

Jana


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## cuchuflete

Has it disappeared from all of your posts, or just the older ones?  There is a time limit for editing posts.  Does the post in this thread still show the edit button?


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## la reine victoria

Testing.


Edit:  I am still able to edit, Cuchu, but your post has no "edit" button.




LRV


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## Jana337

la reine victoria said:


> Testing.
> 
> 
> Edit:  I am still able to edit, Cuchu, but your post has no "edit" button.
> 
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> LRV


You see the edit button in posts you may edit, i.e. yours only. 

Jana


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## la reine victoria

Thank you Jana. I think Cuchu's question threw me.  

Obviously one cannot edit another person's post.





LRV


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## Necsus

Jana337 said:
			
		

> It disappears after 24 hours. You should be able to edit new posts.





			
				cuchuflete said:
			
		

> Has it disappeared from all of your posts, or just the older ones? There is a time limit for editing posts. Does the post in this thread still show the edit button?


Ahhh, okay. Thanks, Jana & Chucu, I've never noticed it. A recent modification, perhaps? 
(hm, I didn't receive email notification of your answers, but I've received it when lrv posted...  )


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## LV4-26

la reine victoria said:


> Obviously one cannot edit another person's post.


...Only the mods can. 





 Mod Note:  Confirming Jean-Michel's statement...we leave tracks


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## KaRiNe_Fr

Hi forum,

I've recently noticed (thanks to another forer@) that the time is shrinking here especially when trying to correct one of my yesterday posts. Are we living into the Twilight Zone? 
Am I the only one perturbed by this shrinking (it's obviously not the right verb, but it's the only one popping into my mind right now!) of the editing time limit?

As I know some language learners can read my posts, I'm always very sad when I see a mistake bigger than me (!) into my own post and can't correct it on the spot... I know I should read, preview, read and read again before submitting (and I do, I swear!), but you know, you only see your neighbour mistakes, rarely yours.  

Asking a mod could be a solution, but I guess it would be too often and lead to an overload of work for them...  So I just give up.
Maybe this time limit change is due to "polemic" threads into the CD, when people changed their post during the 72 hours, but... why not reducing the time limit to 24 hours merely for the exceptions (the CD forum and maybe others?) and keeping 72 hours for the language only forum (if possible)? 
We are supposed to write here (language forum) with fewer typos and mistakes as possible, and allowing people to edit their posts more than during 24 hours is a good way to avoid mistakes and typos. Don't you think so?

Don't know if I'm clear enough. So bad if not! 
Oh, and I know there are a lot of mistakes into this post, but I don't care that much as I'm an English learner.  Feel free to correct my English, I  always appreciate.

Cheers.

P.S. : And sorry if it's not the right thread to ask this question, but there are some threads about this editing time limit and I found this one the most... "on topic".


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## mkellogg

Hi Karine,

I haven't changed the edit time limit in months.


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## KaRiNe_Fr

mkellogg said:


> Hi Karine,
> 
> I haven't changed the edit time limit in months.


Hi Mike ! 
Thanks for your answer. 
You didn't? How does come it was three days (and previously more than a week I think) and now only one day? I guess this is the default value of vB then? Or maybe it's an old update and I only noticed it now because previously I always used to correct my posts within one day?
I'm lost.


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## elroy

Karine, it's been 24 hours for quite a while now. 

Perhaps you haven't had to edit posts more than 24 hours after submission until recently.


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## mkellogg

It was a string of people editing their own posts after the conversations were over that led me to set it at 24 hours.   Again, I haven't touched this number in months, if not a year!


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## KaRiNe_Fr

mkellogg said:


> It was a string of people editing their own posts after the conversations were over that led me to set it at 24 hours.   Again, I haven't touched this number in months, if not a year!


As Cuchu mentionned here, this time has been reduced...
I think it was in the beginning of October 2006 (not that old though!), and after this upgrade. 
Even if I don't understand the reasons (except maybe for the CD forum, as I tried to explain earlier), I  don't want to discuss this decision. 
Thanks, all, for your answers.


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## Necsus

KaRiNe_Fr said:
			
		

> As Cuchu mentionned here, this time has been reduced... I think it was in the beginning of October 2006 (not that old though!), and after this upgrade.


Yep. This is the reason why I noticed it (and I opened this thread)...


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## ryba

Hello,

I support you and back fully, Karine.

The disappearing EDIT option is one of the reasons why I'm actually stopping loving this forum. And there is a thin line between love and hate...  *It's  a nonsense not to be able to correct your own mistakes *(sorry)*. *We live and learn and thus should have the possibility of improving our own posts on a *language forum* where many threads suffer *sudden revivals*.

EDIT:



jann said:


> Let me repeat this fabulous comment just for emphasis!
> 
> *The best, easiest, fastest, most efficient way to correct a typo or an error in the title of a thread is to click the red triangle* (
> 
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> ) in the upper right corner of any post in the thread. In the box that appears, type a short message requesting a title correction. Your message will be posted on a "to-do" list that is visible to all moderators. That way, the first moderator for your forum to see your request will come along and fix the problem.


So you mean we are supposed to bother a mod any time we make a lil' typo? This way you will receive hundreds of requests like "Oh, I forgot to put a comma between (...) and (...)", etc.


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## cubaMania

One more opinion: I think 24 hours is more than enough time.  (I would shorten it to a couple of hours, which seems to me plenty of time to notice your typos and minor mistakes.)  I dislike it when someone changes a previous post in a way that renders subsequent posts meaningless or nonsensical.  You can always put in another post that says:  "Ooops, I made a mistake above in post #5.  I meant to say xxx instead of xyx."


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## mkellogg

It used to be set at a week, I think.  Then one day somebody got upset and went back and edited all his comments in the previous week - turning some threads into nonsense.


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## JamesM

mkellogg said:


> It used to be set at a week, I think. Then one day somebody got upset and went back and edited all his comments in the previous week - turning some threads into nonsense.


 
This is why I think the 24-hour limit makes sense. I've been through this experience on other boards and it can make a complete hash out of a thread. Worse still is when they delete the original post (or edit by removing all text) and no one happened to quote the entire original post. The responses become useless.


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## panjandrum

It is good to be able to correct minor errors by editing posts.

It is very bad if people are able to delete the original question leaving the rest of the thread meaningless.  This happens.

The current limit on edits is a compromise, balancing these conflicting pressures.





> So you mean we are supposed to bother a mod any time we make a lil' typo?


Of course not.  You are supposed to check your own posts when you make them. You have plenty of time to check, re-check, and edit as appropriate.  If, much later, you discover an error that is particularly embarrassing to you, you may ask a moderator to edit the post.  I've had perhaps three such requests in two years.  Let's be realistic about the scale of the "problem".

If your thread title has a typo then there is nothing you can do other than ask a mod to fix it for you.


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## KaRiNe_Fr

panjandrum said:


> It is good to be able to correct minor errors by editing posts.


I can't imagine the length of some threads if not allowed at all: nearly everybody will post twice for each post! 



> You are supposed to check your own posts when you make them. You have plenty of time to check, re-check, and edit as appropriate.


You're perfectly right. But, you know this strange phenomenon: you can precisely see mistakes of friends, but your brain refuses to see yours. It doesn't bother to really "read" your own post as it knows what is already written. I hate my brain when it does that!  (and it's pretty often...)
And sometimes your fingers live their own lives and decide what to type without consulting the boss. They automaticly type a word after another one just because they are used to do it a lot in another expression. This could lead to pretty funny sentences. 
 


> I've had perhaps three such requests in two years.  Let's be realistic about the scale of the "problem".


Aaaah, statistics to the rescue! 
I don't know anybody here who dare to ask mod for such a minor problem... 

And I don't think about me and my ego (« How horrible! I made a terrible mistake, and I can't correct it: my reputation is ruined now! ») when I want to correct a mistake on my own post but rather to learners reading a wrong word...
Fortunately as I asked my friend to, they PM me on time when they read my mistakes,  and so do I for them. It's my way to "fix" this "issue".


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## panjandrum

> I don't know anybody here who dare to ask mod for such a minor problem...


Really!
Considering the kind of PMs I routinely receive I really can't believe that there are people out there who feel inhibited about asking mods about anything!
But seriously - look at the threads in any forum and imagine how most of them would read if the first post disappeared.  Yes, we have some of those - buried away in the "meaningless threads" box.  They make no sense.


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## elroy

I don't understand why people are making such a big deal about asking the mods to do it.  If the mods are offering to edit your post for you when it's too late for you to do it yourself and the problem is significant (and we are), then just accept the offer!  Rest assured that we will let you know if we think you are abusing the service and exaggerating the gravity of your typos.


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## KaRiNe_Fr

panjandrum said:


> Really!


Of course not! It was just another statistics for a joke. No more evidence. 


> [...]
> But seriously - look at the threads in any forum and imagine how most of them would read if the first post disappeared.  Yes, we have some of those - buried away in the "meaningless threads" box.  They make no sense.


This is a valid argument. I imagine if there are meaningless people, they could make some threads meaningless this way.
So rules are made to prevent meaningless people to do meaningless things, whereas they are not (hopefully?) the major part of this forum (but who knows?)...

As I already said, I already fixed this with friends. So it is no more an issue for me.


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