Editing One's Own Replies

[the_wine_snob]

I have seen this on a limited basis over the years, but it seems to have gotten worse very lately.

The problem is that one makes a Reply to a thread, and then wishes to edit that Reply, sometimes in just moments, but it is not possilbe. The Edit button is not there.

I understand that if another has Replied to my Reply, the Edit button goes away, or is supposed to. In these recent cases, there are no Replies, even hours later, but I keep loosing the ability to edit some of my posts, just like there WERE Replies to the post.

Going back, this happened to only a thread, or two, over several months, but now it's happened to me about 5 times on the product forums - mostly in the Premiere hierarchy. Some posts CAN be edited, but some cannot.

This is not a timing thing, that I can tell, as the Edit button has been missing from my posts of some hours ago, or some that were JUST posted. It seems to be intermittent, but is very frustrating.

FWIW - I'm running updated Chrome, though in the past, when it happened, I was on IE 7.

Just curious if there is maintenance undergoing, that is changing how some things work.

Hunt

[the_wine_snob]

Maybe related, but the Adobe forums went down at ~ 3:00PM -8GMT, at least for me. This was not THAT long after I posted.

Might be coincidence though.

Hunt

[adobe-admin]

I think there was an outage at a server location. Wasn't limited to just Adobe forums.

Not sure about the editing thing. But keep in mind that forum posts are emailed out to subscribers as soon as you post them. So, if you edit your post, it will have different content for those following along via email than for those following along inside the forum in a browser. Personally, I think it is always best to post a reply with the correction than to edit the original so that the conversation can be maintained and is the same to all viewers. Think of posting a message as sending an email. You usually cannot go back and edit the email, you send an update so everyone is on the same page.

[the_wine_snob]

John,

Thank you for the reply (glad you didn't have to edit it... ).

I have been using just the method that you state, and if the [Edit] is major, I do that normally, ever since we lost color in the formatting, to make sure that all see that the edit has been applied.

Never thought about the e-mail end of things, as I only access the forums via my browser, and have MY e-mail notifications turned OFF. Still, I can see where there could be confusion on the parts of some, who do things via POP.

Appreciated,

Hunt

[mytaxsite]

the_wine_snob wrote:

Maybe related, but the Adobe forums went down at ~ 3:00PM -8GMT, at least for me. This was not THAT long after I posted.

Might be coincidence though.

Hunt

Or even a deliberate sabotage by certain Bill Hunt! 

No excuse this time!

[the_wine_snob]

Nah, I am again, not responsible, though I do not have an iron-clad alibi, unless the court sends subpoenas to my Bulldogs...

That's my story, and I am sticking to it.

Hunt

[Jacob Bugge]

I have never (not) seen the failure to edit an unanswered post.

I imagine that it may happen if there has been a removed spam post.

And obviously, it may just happen.

I should be very sorry to give up editing posts because corrections, and corrections to corrections, can become quite messy and difficult to understand; and I believe many of us like to get things, including spelling, right.

Also, I have never seen any misunderstandings or complaints caused by the difference in what email subscribers have seen differently (I should have had to edit this post immediately had I not spotted the misspelling sunscribers before posting).

[adobe-admin]

I'm thinking of emails (not necessarily from this forum) where someone says something like, "definitely do install that new widget" when they mean to say "definitely do NOT install that new widget." If the poster goes back and edits the message, people reading the message board get the right info. But anyone following along by email or who pulled an RSS feed before the update get the opposite, and possibly damaging, message.

[the_wine_snob]

Got you, and appreciate the info. I can see how things could get side-ways.

Maybe I need to consider the RSS feed, and e-mail folk more. Obviously, if would just get everything right the first time around, I would not need to edit.

Often, however, I want to get a response to a user in trouble, and then need to go and get a few links that might be helpful. I'll often go in, note an [Edit] for links, and do it that way. Maybe I will rethink the procedure, and just do a second post with those links, when I find them. I can handle that littel change in workflow, and you make a good point for doing so. I now see the wisdom of that.

Thanks,

Hunt

[Jacob Bugge]

Our lives would be easier if the edits came through to the email receivers.

I will certainly consider adding a new post in case of serious issue changes, but generally I prefer to stick to the forum/browser based ways.

You may also ask: why the edit option if it should be avoided?

In the fair forums, the poster had half an hour to edit, answers or no answers, and there was no complaints over that; but some fun/banter when editing after following posts.

[Claudio_González1]

Jacob Bugge wrote:

Our lives would be easier if the edits came through to the email receivers.

...

In my ignorance, I tend to think that what you suggest is (nearly) impossible.

How about holding any just sent message for (say) a couple of minutes before letting it into the system? I am thinking about the type of edit I most frequently make: correcting a few typos and/or errors, and polishing some phrases, all of which I notice when looking at the already posted message. That couple of minutes would give me the time of making such edits before anyone sees my message. And I think there are some non-Adobe forums that have this feature.

If that's too difficult to implement, I would think of a "preview message" button as sort of substitute. It's usually when one looks at the message as (it will be when) posted that one notices such things.

However, we are daydreaming. There are still some bugs hunting us since the trial period. Until these are corrected, I don't believe any new feature will be implemented. So, it's best to wait and see what the long overdue Clearspace update brings us before suggesting changes to the present form of the forums.

[John Hawkinson]

I think this issue is only solved with discipline on the part of people editing.

John is quite right, it's a bad idea to make any sort of edits that affect content.

The #1 reason I find myself editing posts is I try to use some Jive feature (syntax highlighting, quoting, etc.) and it comes out differently in the preview than it does in the actual post. Also editing long lines in posted scripts so they wrap instead of producing a horizontal scroll bar. Those are changes that are generally not even perceptable in the email interface, and make it much easier to read the post in the web interface.

#2 is fixing typos. As long as the typo is just in words and not in code, I don't feel bad about an edit.

But if it's anything significant, or if it changes posted code, then a reply is a much much better answer.

[adobe-admin · Accepted solution]

John, your comments make me think about a feature request for Preview My Message that would let you see what it looks like (formatting) and give you a chance to fix/change things before hitting send. I don't know if that is available, but will ask about it.

[Jacob Bugge]

Claudio, John, and John,

That sounds good.

[John Hawkinson]

We might be giants!

[the_wine_snob]

I spend time on two other forums, that have the Preview feature. They work pretty well, so long as one is a good proof-reader...

Thanks,

Hunt

[John Hawkinson]

Well, I think that the Jive model is supposed to be WYSIWYG, but of course, with various kinds of markup disabled, there is a big difference. Is the markup disabling a local decision you (John/Adobe) have made, or a decision that Jive made?

Anyhow, I'm sure we can expect it to be different when the new software goes live...

[Noel Carboni]

adobe-admin wrote:

John, your comments make me think about a feature request for Preview My Message that would let you see what it looks like (formatting) and give you a chance to fix/change things before hitting send. I don't know if that is available, but will ask about it.

That could be very nice.

Invariably I almost ALWAYS see stuff wrong when my post is presented in a different format from when I edited it.

I wouldn't like to see the Edit facility eliminated though (however badly it works).  There are STILL going to be mistakes that are only seen when the final post is made.  It's the nature of Murphy's Law.

-Noel

[adobe-admin]

As of right now, Jive doesn't offer a "post preview" option. But I have filed a feature request for it.

[the_wine_snob]

In the fair forums, the poster had half an hour to edit

I remember those days well. Not sure if this note (paraphrased now) appeared in all forums, or just some, but it went "They say that you cannot rewrite history, but here you have 30 mins. to do so... "

Now, I did see examples, where I still had the edit feature, a week later, so there were times that the 30 min. "clock" did not function properly, though it usually did.

Hunt

[Guest]

Jacob Bugge wrote:

Our lives would be easier if the edits came through to the email receivers.

In the fair forums, the poster had half an hour to edit, answers or no answers, and there was no complaints over that; but some fun/banter when editing after following posts.

I like the idea of a "time out" before the post is sent out by e-mail.  Give it 10 minutes and then send it.  That way any quick edits would be included.

I frequently see, or realize, my mistake soon after I hit "send".

[try67]

Just wanted to add a bug report related to this: it often happens (recently, at least) that when I try to edit my own posts, it doesn't "take". There no error message, but the message stays the same.

[Jacob Bugge]

[Circular reference deleted by Circular Host]

[the_wine_snob]

Yes, that has happened to several forum contributors. For me, it seems to be a "time" thing, where if I immediately do a quick Edit, it might take, or it might not. For a very long time, all of my Edits just took, but I began investigating, due to others have issues, and found that if I was very quick, then the likelihood of the Edit NOT taking increased. Had one just yesterday, that did not take, until I redid it, and paused a moment, before Updating - then it took fine.

Good luck,

Hunt

[Jim_Simon]

Man, is this double posting BS ever gonna get fixed?!