Battery dead?

I got that, I was just wondering whether you meant from us or from WTT.
 
That's what I was confused about. :lol: You don't need permission to post anything here either.
 
Thanks! I appreciate that. Some sites don't like stickies or tutorials being posted without some sort of peer or staff review.

Okay, it is posted here but I don't have permission rights to make it a sticky.
 
I've made it a sticky. We try to remove/point out inaccurate content, but you're more than qualified enough for there to be no issue.
 
Bill, if you have other hardware-related tutorials that you would like to post there, please feel free to do so.
 
We try to remove/point out inaccurate content, but you're more than qualified enough for there to be no issue.
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That does not mean I can not or have not been wrong. Don't any one hesitate to point something out if, when I am.

Bill, if you have other hardware-related tutorials that you would like to post there, please feel free to do so.
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Thanks, though I'm not sure they can really be called "tutorials". Just me yapping.
 
That said, I have been a bit slack in keeping it current and moving it today reminded me I need to update it. As can been seen by the history at the bottom, I like to go in and make updates and corrections every now and then. But I cannot "Edit Post". Can we change that without much trouble? I'd hate to have to bug some one every time to make a minor edit when I see the a extra word?
 
We'll look into the best way of doing that - I agree it would be better for you to be able to edit the thread on your own.
 
Will Watts said:
We'll look into the best way of doing that - I agree it would be better for you to be able to edit the thread on your own.
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Oh, interesting, I didn't know Sysnative was this way as well in regards to editing posts. On Tech Support Forum, I think you get ~15 minutes since submitting a post before you lose the option to edit. Is this a setting somewhere in the adminCP, or it related to something else?
 
Yes - both here and at TSF you get 15 minutes to edit the post. It's a setting in the ACP, but unfortunately it's pretty much an all or nothing setting - it applies to everyone who isn't a mod/admin.
 
Quite the interesting feature, I've never seen it on any other forums other than here and TSF. I actually like it, although sometimes if I notice a mistake and cannot edit my post, it bothers me a bit :')
 
if I notice a mistake and cannot edit my post, it bothers me a bit :')
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That has always bothered me, frankly. I understand the reasoning, some folks will abuse it - deleting (they think) "evidence". Some misuse it (no intentional maliciousness) and change their opening post, for example, then all the following replies make no sense. Or they post a problem then 30 minutes later realize the on/off switch was in the wrong position, then try to unpost their problem (often apologetically for wasting our time) as I just encountered today here.

The biggest problem I occasionally see with full time edit capabilities is forum newbies who add information to their opening post via edit, instead of posting a reply. The problem there is subscribers to the thread do not get email notifications of the edits and don't see the new information. This sometimes results in delays providing help and frustration for the OP, thinking they are being ignored. But when I see that, I simply "educate" the poster on forum ways and forum etiquette.

I think most users will not, and do not abuse the edit feature and I personally see no overwhelming reason not to enable it.
 
The main reason it's not enabled is as a spam preventative measure. It's far from uncommon for spammers to post a series of seemingly legit threads with no links, and then edit the posts to include links a few days later. Whilst we can monitor new posts easily, we can't monitor edit changes for every post made by new members to make sure a spam link hasn't been included.

The other concern is, as Digerati has stated, that new members will inadvertently misuse it. For a lot of people, posting here will be the first time they've ever used forum software. It's easy to get confused about what is/isn't relevant and should be edited out, likely leading to confusion and hard to follow threads. This isn't an issue for most forums, but as we're a support forum we need threads to have a clear structure and not be missing information.

A large number of users won't even notice the edit feature, let alone misuse it, but there are more drawbacks to enabling it for everyone than there are benefits. As such, there are no plans to enable this feature to all members, but we're considering other alternatives.
 
Another reason for a time limit is to save forum staff work; a common spammer tactic is to create a 'clean' post then return later to edit in the payload.

Or what Will just wrote ^^
 
That is true about the spamming problem. But since an edit to existing threads does not cause the thread to bubble up to the top of the list where others will readily see it, I am not sure that is really a big problem. But I could certainly be wrong there.

It would be nice if forum software was more flexible so you could automatically grant such rights after X number of posts, or on a case by case basis, or perhaps by member groups (besides admin and mods).
 
^^^^ All things we're considering - we have some flexibility, but usergroup permissions are somewhat awkward with vBulletin.

Regarding spammers, their main aim is not usually to get real users to click on the links, but to use the links to get a better search engine ranking for themselves. If you can edit 10,000 links into forum posts across a couple of hundred sites, then your site will appear much higher in search rankings than it would normally. The occasional person who clicks on the link can't hurt either - a large number of site visitors never register, they come across old threads through search engines.
 

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