9
votes
Notify people who replied to a post/comment when it's edited?
Some people only include footnotes on their text after they finish it, or realize that their interpretation of something might not be the same as others interpretation (like what is social media) or source their claims, or detail it after finishing the main body. Admittedly we might want to let the user choose whether their edit is worth notifying to all who replied for the sake of stuff like typos though.
I seem to remember there being several discussions on similar ideas to this ages ago on ~tildes somewhere, but for the life of me I cannot find any of them now. IIRC the general consensus was that automatic notifications for edits could (and likely would, IMO) lead to a lot of issues/arguments, and the benefit is negligible.
And as for users opting to send a notification on editing, that can essentially already be accomplished if the user simply includes a mention (e.g. @username) for anyone who they want to be notified of the changes in the edit. That may be a bit of a PITA if there are lots of users someone wants to notify but in most cases right now it would only be a handful of users at most, and if/when this ever becomes a serious issue, simple making @replied (or something similar) send out notifications to everyone who replied to you, could potentially be added as a feature.
p.s. This other feature request might interest you, since it's somewhat related and already approved:
Add ability to "watch" topics (or individual comment threads?) and get a notification on replies
Maybe have an icon next to replies that are older than their parent's modification date?