... To be coming reluctantly round to the idea of an edit facility?

[RustyBear]

I've always been against the idea of being able to edit posts, but the Irresistable Rise of Auto Correct is beginning to change my mind...

Some of the examples I have collected recently:

He put> Benoit
Nspcc> maids
Mnhq> Gwen
Towards> toasted
Someone> dimwit
Get home> gerbils
So if> sonic

This morning, when I typed 'interrupt' with only one 'r', my ipad ignored the correct spelling and autocorrected to 'interior'. It's often difficult to see the problem on a small phone screen, so you don't notice till you post.

If we did have it, I think it should be limited in time and obvious that the post has been edited, otherwise you get the situation where Tech someone gets the date of a planned shutdown wrong, fifteen obsessives people tell him it's wrong and he goes back and changes it, leaving them looking like the ones who can't read a calendar...

I do try to preview, but when people post from their phone it's often away from home on a crappy connection, so they don't want to waste time previewing in case they lose it.

Threads I'm on does go to a particular post if you touch the poster's name, but the list of posts is quite short, so often on a fast moving thread that may not be enough. Can still be better than going to the start of the thread though.

Bubblewrapped - there is the bookmark function....

I too would like to see a quote facility. Some forums allow branches on threads so that you can see which post you are replying to - but I favour a snippet of the text to which you are responding.

I must be naive because I could not at first see how there could be anything malicious about an edit facility, provided only the poster of the message could edit it. When I have edited it has only been for typos - bad grammar. However, I now see whay you mean that someone might alter their original point which could make subsequent responses look odd.

Branching bad because it gets confusing.

Quoting bad because people quote whole posts and then just put 'I agree', then people quote posts with quotes in them, and it's all a big bloody mess.

Editing maybe ok but with very very very limited time to edit, otherwise comments below make no sense as the OP has changed. MN moves so fast that 30 seconds may be too long. Perhaps only allow editing if you are starting a thread, not for any post within a thread?

SPB :o at "why is someone turned into dimwit?"

(see how I quoted there, without any special button, I did it all by myself)