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Former Member
Aug 04, 2005 at 10:21 AM

Misuse of the "Edit Message" functionality in forums.

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Hi,

I have been observing for some time now that some users are actually misusing the option of editing their forum post. This is partly due to the fact that the time stamp for the message is not updated when the edit is done. It still shows the time when it was posted.

Especially in the ABAP Programming Forum, there's a mad rush (among a few people) to be the first one to answer the question. In this hurry they are often making a post with an incorrect answer. Later on when they are told that what they have said is incorrect, they are simply editing the post and inserting the correct answer, which is known by then. This is sometimes resulting in multiple correct answers to a question and in the occassional case where the user wants to reward the correct answer, the points would actually go to these edited messages, because of their timestamp.

In a few other cases, the questions are being edited by the guy asking the question. Especially after having received some answers. When the question changes, the answers aren't correct any longer, obviously. At a later point someone attempting to answer the question would be left wondering why this question had had so many wrong answers!!

It sounds too string a step to take to remove this functionality. But may be we could allow this with some reservations. For example - all the content that has been deleted from a post can be highlighted (a function that is similar to the Modification Assistant in SAP or the Reviewing feature in MS-Word).

What say ?

Regards,

Anand Mandalika.