9
votes
Suggestion: Show Edit History of posts
Can we get an Edit history on posts (also potentially comments).
This is sparked by a post a few days ago in which a poster asked a question about people's standpoints on gay marriage and then published their standpoint as well, heavily against gay marriage.
I made my comment here questioning them on their standpoint and they edited their post without any evidence, making it look like I was jumping to conclusions.
Post history would prevent this kind of thing and would also equip commenters with the ability to see what OP has changed.
Please let me know if you agree or disagree for whatever reason, I am interested to hear other people's thoughts.
Edit: The poster in my comment link was banned shortly after that post. Linked by @Jedi here.
Disagree. I've said this the last time it was mentioned but there are instances when people post a link to something accidental (facebook, linkedin, etc...) due to a copy paste fail or they posted something they later don't want people to see. Being able to see that could lead to potential doxing.
Deimos has already stated his opposition to this.
I don't think we should be adding edit history, especially not because of potential trolls. It's important for users to be able to correct themselves or remove information, if the feel they've accidentally shared too much.
I disagree with an edit history. Most of the time, when people edit, it's to remove an accidental link or rephrase something that was clumsily said, and edit history doesn't provide anything beneficial in this case, it's only be another vector to argue over. Maybe have a short term one only visible to moderators, but even that I think isn't worth the privacy trade off, unless it's only activated after someone's been reported (and deactivated if it turns out they're not maliciously editing their posts)
Kinda like how github now has edit history - that would be pretty cool. Could even have it in git diff format :D
Quick thought: we could have a (negative) tag called "Ninja Edit" or some such, which users could use to register their seeing some jerk playing the edit system.