We’ve changed very few of the defaults on this hosted implementation of Discourse… we’re basing that decision on the fact the people who wrote the software and the people who host it probably know what they are doing
There are 2 time windows, you have 300secs (5mins) where you can edit your post and it doesn’t show as being edited, and 86400sec to edit it after the 300sec window. After that it’s fixed and can’t be edited. These could be changed but I (me personally) would want to see some good reasons and justifications as why we would need to change the defaults.
[quote=“MM0FMF, post:8, topic:12152”]changed very few of the defaults[/quote]Aye, the less you change the less there is to fix if something changes underneath you.
86400 is a typical programmers default. A normal person would have chosen 90000 or 100000 if they had to deal in minutes (but would probably be wondering why it couldn’t be in hours or days, and blaming the programmers). A mathematician might have chosen a number of similar magnitude with some obscure special properties (“Are all your defaults prime numbers? ***Why?***”).
What’s a factor of 60 between friends! I blame the fact I have to keep switching between my laptop keyboard (small), my clients US keyboard laptop and occasionally a French keyboard. All are obviously different and also subtly different!
The main point is we have not changed many of the values. Oh no, back to work time.
To edit what? - your personal qrz.com page is always and forever editable: for you, that is… Just login, click on the “G8ADD” menu item top right, then “Edit G8ADD”, choose which of the actions you wish to perform and away you go - simples! Don’t forget to save your changes, though (I’m guilty of this a lot )
We run manually checking of signups Wunder. It’s a bit of a pain but it means that we have done some ‘due-diligence’ on the users. Normally spammers are obvious. Likewise I scan DB signups though they can do less damage there.
It’s annoying we have to manually check but it’s just how it is on the internet.
Just to give an example. This old activation report is quite a mess, because external links are broken and even the German Schmutzlaute (ÄÖÜ) are not displayed correctly:
With my name and call sign below this article, which identify me as the author, I feel meanwhile a little bit ashamed of the poor quality. Therefore I thought a little bit polishing might help.
It is fully comprehensible to rely on the experience of those who do use Discourse already a longer time in production. Maybe the field of application is different if Discourse is not only used as a discussion platform but also as storage for e.g. activation reports.
Maybe I was misled by the name of the category “Activation Reports” and therefore misused the reflector for the storage of my reports. But in my opinion Discourse made it very easy to create nice reports and IMHO is a perfect “vehicle” to transport this kind of information to all those who might be interested. At least up to now I got no negative response from the readers.
But an activation report is implicitly a kind of long term material and therefore may need some long term maintenance, e.g. if external links get invalid, or maybe even if a described route is not existent anymore and would lead anyone who is following the same route into the wrong direction.
Another aspect is, if the originator of an article, who maybe publishes some pictures, cannot change or revoke his posted material. Then he cannot even carry out his responsibility if someone blames him for publishing inappropriate material. Here we easily drift to a discussion, analogue to the question of data ownership of the big social network providers.
The SOTAwatch summit information is well prepared for updates, so why shouldn’t this be the same for the reflector.
Otherwise I’ve to think about refraining from posting activation reports here on the reflector, because after a certain time the content isn’t anymore under my control.
No, it’s a perfect use of the reflector. However, you have pointed out a shortcoming with the locking when a post gets old. TBH, I don’t know what the best fix is right now.
In the short term, if a report has been locked, you can add a reply to the report with new information. Again it’s not perfect but it means reports stay somewhere reliable (the reflector is backed up, I don’t know if Wordpress blogs get backed up) and if some searches for a report on a summit you can hope that if they get a result, they will read all the posts in the thread.
The pictures issue is a valid point. You should be able to request the MT delete something for the reason of copyright infringement.
I don’t know if changing the lock time will unlock reports already locked Stephen. I think someone from the MT will have to chat with the hosting people to see what options are available.
There is a “feature” that allows an administrator to change the timestamp of a post but what the effect of that would be to the post itself and the subsequent posts, I have no idea. I speculate as to whether changing the timestamp of a post to a something within the last 60 days would actually allow the author to edit but of course no one has tried this and no one knows the consequences.
However administrators as far as I remember, can always edit a post no matter how old so if there is something that critically needs to be changed, one of the administrators should be able to fix that on request.
Relying quite a lot on my memory that may be faded.
Jim
Hi Stephan, I also feel that some kind of long-term editing facility should be made available to authors of Reflector posts to cater for such exceptional circumstances as you have mentioned - however, I also appreciate the point of disabling editing after a certain period. So, how to resolve this quandary?
One practical solution might be to follow the lead of several others here who post their sometimes quite lengthy activations reports in their own personal blogs, and who then write a very short article here in this reflector, placing a link to their blog in the article. The blog can of course always be edited… Meine zwei Pfennige nur, neh?
But Stephan, a report is a report, not an editable guide. It describes what happened on a particular occasion. It is a historical document.
Suppose on an ascent you followed a path which was later carried away by a landslip, the fact that you can no longer follow that path doesn’t change the fact that you did follow that track. Information of that sort of change does not belong in the report, it belongs in a later post in the same thread, or a new thread.
What about those of us who will NEVER write a personal blog? Not at any time for any reason. And is there such a thing as a permanently hosted for free blog? Any blog with a hosting fee will eventually disappear, leaving a dead link on the summit page. What happens to your history then? While currently not a perfect solution, a SOTA hosted activation report will live as long as SOTA does
[quote=“DM1CM, post:22, topic:12152”]
One practical solution might be to follow the lead of several others here…
[/quote]My comments took the form of a suggestion - one is left to decide for oneself how one wishes to report one’s activations. Take out a double-spread in the New York Times, maybe?
Yes that would be a solution I could take into consideration. As a positive consequence nothing needs to be changed on the SOTA reflector.
But on the downside, this would mean that the activation report and the replies from SOTA readers reside on completely different sites, which might not be very inviting to comment about the report.
Ability to edit is essential, I just had to edit a post 3 times for each typo I spotted in my tiny mobile window.
However auto locking posts makes good sense. Here is probably less than most places but on the photo forum I admin we have had smart asses come back and change posts to be offensive, and of course the usual come back and add a back link for their spam.
Another route they use is linked images, which we allow though I personally would restrict just to attachments.
All they need to do is swap out the image for one named the same and it could be literally anything. Had that too of course.
Most boards the mods can see the edit history so if people go editing posts to take out things that make replies to them not seem right the mods can see the real story.
A few minutes for corrections and a day for edits seems OK and typical to me.
)