Update to self post edit time limit + deletion guidelines

As that page describes, the last post also does this. So even if you post in there to avoid bumping. They can obviously still post afterward and edit that one again. Its not hard to disguise such post in such way it appears as a normal one. Except it getting a high edit count.


But my question is now: what about threads in software which get updated? It might be needed to edit the mega link in these cases. My OFS plugins usualy dont get a lot of updates so they can easily remain unchanged for months. But if an update happens, i rather have the OP updated to contain the newest version.

1 Like
1 Like

I’m thinking about this decision…

Maybe we shouldn’t let a few bad apples spoil the bunch, because people keeping their posts up to date is potentially worse than a few people deciding to wipe their whole portfolios. I dunno.

I don’t get the particular reason for someone wiping their posts without providing a Patreon alternative, when you can just change your website username here if there’s a privacy issue. Maybe a moral dilemma. :eggplant:

I think it’s a complex issue here, but we may need to think this through and see what type of solutions can be programmed onto the website.

1 Like

Gonna be honest, this is pretty annoying and makes zero sense to have to deal with

There are a bunch of scripts I want to update, or give an alternate version of… making an entirely new post for just that is pretty silly.

6 Likes

It looks like we can’t even edit past messages lol. I tried to edit topic templates and there’s no edit buttons for the messages I sent to myself.

1 Like

This page will need continuous edits.

1 Like

this update reminds me of Kim Jong-un, the owner of a country without freedom.

1 Like

No offense but, I feel like this was the wrong way to handle this. Eroscript is all about collaboration so discussing changes with the community ahead of time would have been a better way to address this. Dropping changes without warning has already caused issues for frequent script uploaders/editors.

No matter the quality of these changes, acting impulsively is going to do more damage to the health of the site than any sort of individual post deletion by users. Trust is easy to lose, and very hard to gain back. I’d ask you guys to consider this when we already are a small group; with no reason to stick around if a better alternative comes up.

That being said I definitely appreciate that the mods care about preserving the history/scripts of the site. And the anonymize feature for post deletion seems OK. But as for the editing limitations, the flaws of Discourse really don’t make them an appealing solution to that dilemma. Like to speak on trust again, you don’t trust us to delete our own posts but you do trust that other people won’t deface the new wiki pages? Really?

We may be a small community but that doesn’t mean that troublemakers can’t register new accounts/dodge bans with VPNs. Doing it like this is just going to make more work for mods when someone inevitably does decide to mess with the forum. It’ll also lead to things getting messed up until someone can manually look at it. Not very convenient for anybody.

And that tradeoff really isn’t worth it when you consider that every edit past the deadline that could have existed before is now going to create to a new and unnecessary topic on the forum. We already have problems with visibility because of stuff like poor tagging or topics being buried in obscure places.

I just can’t see what you guys do in these changes. I’d ask that you please reconsider.

4 Likes

The problem is discourse is popular, but for forums definitely not one of the best. There are many flaws here as they tried to simplify as much as possible, preventing very specific cases to be handled properly. You are going to rely on plugins/mods to get more functionality, which ofc have a high risk of breaking on updates.
But yeah, if 90% of their users consider the default functionality fine, they wont care about the 10%. Plugins in most forum software over time ended up becoming a hassle to maintain. If the plugin maker stops, or the framework gets a major change, it might break sites and require a lot of coding to fix it. A very unpopular feature of many forum software as they only notice the pain when its too late.

I fail to see how this is an issue big enough to be worth preventing everyone from editing their posts.
Hopefully this change will be reversed.

7 Likes

Fuck, fuck and fuck.
The ban on editing original topics breaks completely my concept of posting scripts.
Should I not publish them for free now?

I hope the guys keeping the forum running understand the legal aspect.
It turns out that if a user decides to delete all their threads with scripts (which are intellectual property) - they are obliged to do it or it falls under “piracy”.
Until yesterday, the guys provided a platform and did not influence the published content in any way, leaving it to the conscience of the community - now I feel quite strong restrictions on “freedom of publication” and I feel uncomfortable.

Having read through the thread I’m at a bit of a loss as to why this is being introduced. The reason given appears to be that the mod team are against a user removing the scripts that they previously made and are now bringing in a rule which will limit some peoples desires to make new scripts.

It’s possible i am misunderstanding the reasoning behind this decision and if so im happy to hear them out. From my own point of view I dont edit a lot of my own posts down the line but I had one just yesterday where two of my links had gone down and I needed to update with new ones and under the new rules I wont be able to do this.

I might be making assumptions here but with most of the posts the replies are of lower importance over all and so if a reply gets deleted when someone edits a post then no big deal.

Finally from a strictly personal point of view it sucks that the mods didnt even consult the patreon backers.

3 Likes

I joined this site in March and I’ve had to do that since day 1, because the Mega link in the OP had expired or whatever. I basically now just jump to the end and scroll up to the most recent link.

For me it’s new and -updated- posts. I hit “Free Scripts” in the left nav bar and scroll through that until I get to the blue line showing where my last visit was. I hardly ever search - I just glance through those ones at the top of the “free” list, whether they be new or edited.

FWIW, I feel that if you make a post, you should be able to edit or delete it. Yes it can leave holes in the history or such, but sometimes people make mistakes or say the wrong things so people should have the option to correct that. Just my opinion.

2 Likes

I won’t be posting content under these rules.

I don’t like this decision.
Please Reconsideration about this guidelines.

5 Likes

I have not left yet, but I will be out starting tomorrow so I leave it up to the other mods to make any further decisions. But I do have other obligations, so I only check this site like once a day.

No, we’re not selling out or anything. Nothing has changed about site administration or funding. I’m extremely grateful that user donations have been covering the hosting costs over the last couple months.

Normally, I would prefer to take time to consider changes and get feedback first. This change was a knee jerk reaction to stop the bleeding of a seemingly random mass deletion of someone’s topics/scripts. Genuinely not talking bad about that user, just that after some back and forth and a bunch of edit-deletions, they changed their mind and no longer want to delete everything. Had we not made the edit changes and allowed the deletion or allowed the self-edit-deletes, I would argue that the site would be worse off for it minus the controversy.


Regarding editing/inability to edit, I’m not sure if the whole editable wiki post recommendation was missed or not. If you have a topic that does need frequent updating, a wiki post should get the job done. If needed, we can raise the trust level requirements for editing wiki posts to prevent griefing, though I doubt that would actually be a problem. (It might be that much older topics need to have a mod turn them into wiki posts unfortunately)


I still think that the edit length issue is more complicated than just allowing anyone to edit forever into the future. Remember that edit privileges are not too far off from delete privileges. If I had to put it simply, allowing it gives the topic creators a ton of power, potentially to the detriment of everyone else. And consider what effect this has to the forum across a longer period of time. Is that the right dynamic? Hard to say. For example, if I were to nuke my entire account, things that would basically disappear are the rules, announcements, and the entirety of the Archived scripts from RTS. Or if someone else made an old topic on an open source software or a howto guide (and perhaps those topics had a lot of community engagement/contribution), that might effectively be deleted too.

There’s a lot of implicit rules that were never discussed in the history of this forum. For example, if we were any other (discourse) forum with default settings, you would have never had this edit ability. Many other sites operate with and without long term user editing/deletion, it’s kind of a tossup.

IANAL, from a purely legal perspective, I believe anything posted on a discourse forum is considered creative commons. GDPR applies only to personally identifiable data, which the large majority of content posted here does not contain. And a general thought is that anything you post on the internet, you should assume will be available on the internet forever. Again, is this the right setting for this site? Hard to say, but it’s something to think about.

Note: I’m reading both this and the boycot topic so I may be mixing up my responses to both

3 Likes

okay i need to pack

other mods feel free to chime in

I think multiple examples were given in this thread where changing to a wiki would not be the correct use case, except if you expect all script topics to be wikis.

I’d argue that your change to avoid that made the site worse off, plenty of creators updated their topics to make them better.

Yeah a site admin can nuke the site they’re the admin of, I don’t think that’s a good argument one way or another.

But we did, it’s not the same thing to never have something and to have something taken away.

That is certainly not true, your own ToS states that we keep ownership on any content we post. If that’s not what’s intended, you should update the ToS.

1 Like

I really don’t think it needs to be more complicated than that.

I understand the concept that deleting a comment or topic leaves gaps and makes things less neat. However, the scripts and things we post should be considered our own intellectual property to do with as we please.

I’m not saying I want to see it happen, but I think a user SHOULD be able to “nuke” their account if they choose to do so. I think a user SHOULD be able to go back and edit each of their posts to be monetized instead of free if they choose to do so, or to change an old script to a new updated version, or make new preview gifs, or add to a script collection, or fix a typo, or any one of a million non-malicious reasons a person could want to edit a post.

Without the ability to edit or remove content, I fear the scripting portion of this site will become awfully quiet awfully quickly.

Is there a way to make editing/deleting possible without deleting an entire topic and its associated comments?

Edit: I just edited this post for clarity. I used “it’s” at the end instead of “its.” :man_shrugging:t2:

6 Likes

This gets brought up a lot. To me it is better to consider what kind of forum EroScripts is than how a Discourse forum usually works.

I suppose a typical Discourse forum puts emphasis on discussions, where the topic post is simply an initiation for the stream of conversation that arrives after. This is why the integrity of conversations matters a lot and edit / deletion can be harmful.

Eroscript (particularly the Scripts and Software category) is centred around the topic post where the script / software is hosted. The subsequent replies are usually comments on the topic post and are not necessarily a connected flow of discussion. If there are any, the outcome of it usually gets reflected on the topic post. No creators expects their reader to go through all the replies just so they can find the download link for the latest release.

Wiki-post is one way to resolve the issue of editing, though it leaves a security loophole behind which needs to be safe-guarded by the moderation team. My question is, if we are confident to prevent malicious edit by heightening the pressure on our staff member, why don’t we use the same strategy to stop self-nuking?

Here’s perhaps another example of why the editing feature is needed.
https://discuss.eroscripts.com/t/gishinaki-kangxi-sex-blender-eevee/120892/4?u=falafel

2 Likes