Official Luthiers Forum!

    What other luthier boards are you talking about Brock? Just... curious.

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Billy Dean Thomas
Covina, CA

"Multi famam, conscientiam, pauci verentur."
(Many fear their reputation, few their conscience)

Brock,

I recall plans mentioned in the past of bringing the edit button back if
future software allowed it to expire after 15-20 minutes. If this is still in
the plans (although I know new software may be some time off) it seems
like a good plan to me. I can certainly see the problems that the ability of
a member to indefinitely edit can cause to continuity of a discussion, but
the time limit seems a good compromise. Just curious.

I must say I post about 5% as often as I used to since it's disappearance.
No offense intended or taken, but the ability to rethink or edit in the first
few minutes after posting can be a bit of a safety net, especially for
professionals.

And although I know you don't want this topic to develop much further, I
have never seen any point of disagreement with policies like those of the
MIMF. To the contrary, every rule and policy makes perfect sense to me
and I can easily see good reasoning behind each one. Problems certainly
arose over the years. The rules gradually evolved to keep them in check
so that people could just come for help or to share useful trade info. This
forum is a wonderful compliment to others, but is certainly still in it's
youth. In the past year alone there seems a gradual leaning away from the
rather idealistic philosophy of trust in self governance, to a gradual shift
to more structure and firm rules (religion, edit button, etc.). All for very
good reasons I'm sure.

I'm not making any Animal Farm analogies, but although I'm sure it will
always be a great community and forum I do expect rules to evolve to
more closely mirror other forums over time (as they have already begun
to in certain cases).

It's not an easy job that you guys have taken on here and I really don't
envy you. Thanks though, and remember not to lose any sleep over
problems here. Oh yeah..... I want the edit button back.

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

You know this forum is amazing. When I first started reading here I was shocked by how courteous and informative it was. Not to mention great sections on jigs, tools, and such. The suppliers that help sponsor the site are very helpful, and are responsive to requests for new tools, jigs, and building materials. Group buys, builds and so forth work here. The membership is great and deserve the bulk of the credit for this, but memberships are drawn and develop around the central goals and framework set up by the owners of this forum (Whom are actively working to keep the vision on track).

I personally believe that you will never have a perfect fit for all members, but that is just kind of the way things work. This forum runs VERY well, and the environment is one of the best I have ever seen. I am sure if there is an issue, such as the EDIT button or a deleted post. Lance and Brock are using there best judgment (we may not understand the full situation all the time, but they do and can react accordingly). They may not provide a solution for an EDIT button quickly, but if there is a GOOD solution that will suit the forum. I am sure they will add the feature without hesitation.

Now that is a BIG RANT for a guy that reads a lot more than he posts (I type pretty slow ).

Cheers to the best membership on the web .


Peace,Rich

I'm a member here and also on the Luthierforum (without the "S".) The problem of people going back and editing posts or deleting posts is real, and it can really screw up the flow of a thread (or let a guilty party appear innocent when others go back to read the thread.)

However, I think an edit button is an essential part of any forum, despite the problems that can occasionally be caused by it. I won't repeat Hesh's words - I'll just say that they are well thought-out, and not a knee-jerk reaction. Hesh makes several excellent points.

I often post late at night - after a good portion of my brain cells have already decided to enter another dimension. I'm also long-winded, and employ run-on sentences to drive English teachers crazy. So, the chance of an error is great. I do usually preview posts and usually use a spell checker (Google toolbar thingie), but we all know that spelling errors are only one form of grammatical error. Sometimes the meaning of a sentence is garbled or lost by an incorrect word substitution (like "though" and "thought" - I made that mistake earlier today in a letter, and I'm sure glad I caught it!)

Occasionally, on every forum, some jerk needs to be booted out. If the moderators identify someone abusing the edit button to "hit and run" (post something nasty and make sure the target sees it, then edits the post to appear innocent), or has a tantrum and starts deleting all their posts, well, the forum is better off without that person. Boot 'em, Dano!

So, that's my solution: have an edit button, actively moderate posts and posters only when necessary, and boot the (very few) jerks who stink up the place.

$0.02

Dennis

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Dennis Leahy
Duluth, MN, USA
7th Sense Multimedia

I have said this before, but as an active member of a few big forumsI always have the ability to edit my posts and so does every other member. All those forums have moderators that keep a close eye on threads just to help control some inevitable situations.
If Lance and Brock are so paranoid (I mean that in a nice way) about certain posts and threads, would that be something to consider??

I'm sure there are a few nice members that would gladly help.

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Peter M.
Cornerstone Guitars
http://www.cornerstoneukes.com

I forgot to mention that there is another way that people can really screw up threads, intentionally or unintentionally, that is often worse than over-editing: photo links.

Here's an example:

This is a photo of a beautiful nude nun (note her habit on the ground), mooning the White House and shouting obscenities at an anti-war rally (note the use of the annotation, showing her obscene words.)

Besides the fact that the photo violates all the major OLF policies, it simply links (forever, if uneditable) to a filename somewhere on the Internet. If the link is on Photobucket or another free online storage, the link could be broken for a number of reasons. I can also delete the file. Or, I can change the file to a photo of some bearclaw Sitka - which makes my caption very confusing. Anyone in the thread that comments on the photo will sound pretty silly if I change the photo, and will lose their meaning if the photo link gets broken.

So, just as members need to be responsible enough to maintain the photos they use in links, and not to destroy a thread by manipulating photos maliciously, members need to understand why it is not OK to manipulate (improperly edit) or delete text.

Almost everyone who posts here will "get it" if told why they should not improperly edit or delete posts. The few that don't get it should get a couple of reminders, then should be shown the door.

That's an extra $0.02

Dennis

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Dennis Leahy
Duluth, MN, USA
7th Sense Multimedia