Taking away the edit option after

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My husband suggested that, after I was upset by a situation, the edit be blocked after people respond to your post. As an Aspie I dont necessarily like the idea because sometimes I get embarrassed about misspelled words and I have been guilty of deleting a post because I was upset. However this option also gives people the ability to say nasty and or provoking things then when people respond they can change their post and make it look as though people are attacking them. Ive been online since the early 90's and Ive seen people mess with other people and with me for years. It upsets me when I see it happening....its not that removing the edit option is going to stop this but it could possibly help with the scenario above.

I do agree some people do abuse the edit button. I haven't abused it ever. I have only used it to edit my spelling errors or to add in something or to rephrase something if I thought it might be taken the wrong way, I have also deleted my posts thinking it might be seen as a personal attack and sometimes people take back what they say after someone gets offended with what they wrote so they delete it. I once took something out of my post when one person got offended by it so I thought a flame fest was going to break out so I edit that part out. I don't see that as abuse. I see it as making things right. But I don't think people should edit their posts just because someone was offended or didn't like what they said but they are just trying to avoid getting attacked and avoid drama. Plus some people edit their post by deleting it because they don't need anymore advice or the issue had been fixed or settled so they delete their post so they get no new replies.

Plus when people wish to use the edit button, it always shows they have edited their post. And sometimes people have quoted their post so technically people can see what they wrote still.

I agree that removing the edit would freak me out too but I have the tendency to get really upset when I see people being "played" online. The internet and places like this can be really great, unfortunately they can also be a place for people who either want attention or just enjoy playing mind games.
I was on a site once where a girl said she was pregnant and was having all sorts of problems. We were all worried about her and then she posted saying that she was going into premature labor. Again we were all worried....the very next day she posts a pic of a premature baby saying it was hers. That made us suspicious then the people who ran the board found that she copied the pic from a website so she was never even pregnant. That was kind of a sad thing because she obviously wanted attention but I could go on and on about stories worse that that.
I guess we just have to take the good with the bad and maybe I need to calm down and stop reading things that upset me. Im stressed out enough right now!
So much for unwinding

Maybe the best thing to do would be to follow your own advice and calm down.

For example, it is very hard to believe somebody can make a thread, many people read it too, and then say somehow they said things they may not of because they edited it. Wouldn't lots of people notice and have the same complaints? Maybe your situation is different.

Sometimes it is better to let something go and have peace though.

I think if somebody was truly abusive or playing games than he or she would not have support on the forums.

However, I do feel if someone uses the edit button it should be for good reason. Recently, I erased all of my threads because I was influenced to believe I somehow was wrong. I even wanted to quit. Now I wish I didn't edit anything because I was proud of those posts ;(

Last edited by Decepticon on 24 Jun 2010, 1:43 am, edited 3 times in total.

On another forum in 2005 there was this friend I had and he was 16 and he was born in Germany and could speak four different languages. But he had an American name because his parents gave him one and he moved to the USA when he was five years old. He was born with both genders and he lived in Japan in the summer working at McDonalds and someone there he knew worked for Sony and he gave him a PS3 but he told me how much he weighed and he showed me a picture of him and he was very thin. I couldn't believe he weigh that much so i figured it was muscle. He also took 17 different medications to make his AS from very severe to severe. But my mother knew it was all a lie and so did my aspie friend and even other people on the forum would call him out on it. Then one day someone made a thread about people taking other peoples photos and saying it's them and she was talking about a member there. Then one day my friend posted a story there and he said in it he lied about stuff and I got confused and he told me he lied about lot of things he has said on the forum and to everyone. I was pissed and he sent me a PM apologizing and he even apologized to the whole forum. I was hurt and felt stupid because everyone knew he was lying and I didn't. Then after that he confessed he is just a man and he isn't both genders,he never lived in Japan nor was born in Germany and he isn't on 17 different medications and his AS is mild, not severe and his brother doesn't have it. He also said he has never been out of the USA and he can't speak four different languages. He lied about all these things because he wanted to be liked and wanted people to think he was cool but that didn't work and he realized I would have liked him the way he is than liking him for all this. What made him confess was someone posting a thread about taking peoples photos and using it as themselves. She happened to find it on a band site and it was one of the singers so she knew.
He was also ashamed how he looked and his weight, so he lied about what he looks like.

I had a reason to be hurt because I had defended him when I thought people were being jerks by accusing him of lying and I felt stupid after that because I believed him and everyone else knew he was lying, even my aspie friend. But I forgave him and gave him another chance.

There is an easier solution. When you respond to abusive poster, quote everything they said. They can edit their own post, but not the quotes.

By the way in case of Decepticon (I presume his deletion of his own posts was the main motive for this thread) people DID quote what he said, and yes I read the quotes. I know he said provoking things from these quotes. The reason I said his character was attacked was simple: if A causes B, that doesn't negate that B is still true. So, if one makes provoking posts and it causes others to attack their character, it doesn't change the fact that htey attacked him. Now YES their attack is justified. But I never siad it wasn't. I simply stated it happened (justified or not). Why did I say it? To explain subsequent reaction.

So you see, it has nothing to do with delete button. I knew everything he said since other people quoted him. We simply disagree on a definition of the word "attack". Your definition of it is when a person is being attacked WITHOUT DOING ANYTHING TO CAUSE IT. My definition does not include these last 5 words. I just said that here is what happened, and the fact that it was caused by something else (and, therefore, it was justified) does not change a simple fact that it happened.

I had the same problem with someone who pretended to be someone famous....me and a few other friends got a lot of "I told you so's"....but like I said, gotta take the good with the bad .

Sometimes people don't mean to provoke others. Someone can say something innocent by speaking their mind or making a joke and bam someone gets offended so they attack. Someone can post an innocent thread trying to share something and bam someone thinks that person was trying to rile people up.

I once said something mean out of anger, but then I edited it. Another person caught me, but I apologized for it and told him that I was just feeling bad at the time.

Yeah sometimes people do take back what they say so they edit it out. But some people say you can't take what what you say. My husband says it's already in peoples minds, it can be saved to their files, they can just copy and paste what you say and save it to Word Pad, and people already saw what you wrote. All that person can do is admit they said it and they took it back so they edit it out and they are sorry for it than denying they ever said it when they get called out on it.

One thing is, if you edit a post that has replies, it shows that it's been edited, and when the last edit was. So there is a sign that it has been changed.

I don't mind editing to change spellings or rearrange a few words to make the sentence clearer. It bothers me that if someone replies afterwards, it comes up with 'edited X times..' as it makes me look like one of those people who sneakily changes their argument to make others look foolish.

I think if you make a drastic change (i.e. deleting whole paragraphs or adding new chunks of text) the polite thing to do would be to say what the changes are in brackets, and if possible explain why you did it i.e [edited: story removed. irrelevant]

I tend to distrust people who edit compulsively without explaining. It's ok if noone's replied yet, but if you keep going back and trying to rewrite history, that comes across as pretty pathetic.

There are quite a few people here who are always editing their posts. I think it could be misspellings they corrected or they added in things.

I know one user here who had kept editing her posts, she say one thing and then the next thing I knew, she had edited it by taking it out and saying something else. I asked her why does she keep doing that and she said she was trying to make it look better and thinks it sound better.

I have added the words EDIT in the past and then say something and one time I took something out of my post when someone was offended with something I said in it so I said in my EDIT I took something out to avoid a flame fest.

But sometimes I take stuff out without explaining.

I edit myself all the time, but not to be deceptive. I may find typos, realize it doesn't sound the way I intended, etc. Usually right away after hitting post, because things just proof differently once posted than in the white box (I have a lot more trouble seeing my own errors in the white box).

As for totally changing an upsetting post - people should be able to think better of what they said, as long as they don't lie about what they wrote the first time. That becomes an issue of personal integrity, I guess. I understand the room for problems, but sometimes it takes people a while to calm down and realize they've made a mistake.

Just my opinion; I have no control over how the edit option works for members.

I edit because I am obsessed with accuracy, so if I see I misphrased something and gave it a slightly different meaning from what I intended, I would feel a need to edit it. Also I am equally obsessed with covering all possible angles, so I would edit it to include another argument or some possible counter-argument to what I said, with refutation, etc. I almost never edit for grammar (that has never been my obsession) but if I edit it for the above described reasons (which I do all the time) then I might use an apportunity and fix the grammar if my eye happens to fall on it.

And no, I don't ever edit things after people responded to make them look stupid. If I did, that would have ruined my obsession with accuracy So yeah, I am one more person who edits almost all of their posts, for reasons OTHER THAN manipulation.