Post edit history / previous versions

dandv

What is the current status of the ability to see the edit history of posts? I've only found this 2006 thread. Any plugins available, or does this require core support?

Bleistivt

Administrators can view this on /dashboard/log/edits

Making this available on a per-post basis for non-admin users would require a plugin.

dandv

I see. I'm looking for a way to allow any user to see the edit history of a post, in order to provide credibility (see the corresponding section in the Muut manifesto).

On the other hand, sensitive data redacted by admins should not be visible in the previous versions of a post.

whu606

@dandv

I'm a bit unclear; that section seems to suggest users can't edit posts.

You can set edit time to as long or as little as you like. Why would you want users to be able to edit posts?

Our forum has a 5 minute window for typos etc. After that, you have to make a new post.

R_J

So admins don't need to be credible then, eh? "some animals are more equal than others"

What you are looking for is something like the history of a wiki, so that everyone would be able to see the last edited text? That would indeed require a plugin and I couldn't think of a nice interface for something like that.

Why don't you simply disallow your users to edit their posts? I'm deeply convinced that it is always a great idea to rethink what you have written before you hit the "Post" button. Giving your users the possibility to change what they have written will make them lazy.
If they are not allowed to change their posts, there will be no credibility concerns...

x00

dandv as Bleistivt says it would require a plugin. /dashboard/log/edits shows edits, so it is in the database.

You need to use the LogModel, which is what contains the edits. If it was me I would optimise with some ajax so it only shows when requested. You need ->GetWhere(array('Operation' => 'Edit', 'RecordType'=>'Discussion', 'RecordID'=>$DiscussionID)... and ->GetWhere(array('Operation' => 'Edit', 'RecordType'=>'Comment', 'RecordID'=>$CommentID)... probably with limit and offset for pagination

You may need to filter these logs down further to only include certain edits.

dandv

Huh? Why did I just get "Your comment will appear after it is approved" after posting my reply?

EDIT (oh the irony): I've just found out that this feature actually is implemented by Discourse - ability to hide or delete old revisions.

dandv

@whu606 said:
Why would you want users to be able to edit posts?

There are many use cases for this; see below.

Our forum has a 5 minute window for typos etc. After that, you have to make a new post.

That would make it extremely painful to maintain an original post that's up to date with the state of affairs.

@R_J said:
Why don't you simply disallow your users to edit their posts? Giving your users the possibility to change what they have written will make them lazy.

Whether users would be lazy or not depends on the community. The ability to edit the first post at least is highly useful in these use cases:

• On software forums, the original post is often edited to point to the latest version of the software being released and discussed (example).
• The OP can also be edited to reflect the current state of affairs being discussed in the thread…
• …or the consensus

I've used this on my own forum for this thread, for example.

The ability to edit posts is a key feature for some less-than-ephemeral forums.

hgtonight

Friendly bump as the last comment was caught by the SPAM filter.

R_J

@dandv said:
I've used this on my own forum for this thread, for example.

Simply because of the footer of your forum you really deserve that someone creates that plugin for you!

If no one has started that by the end of the month, I might try my luck with it. But until then, I do not think I have time for that, sorry.

hgtonight

I am not seeing where I can view the posts edit history.

Are you just looking to see when the post was last edited? That is available in core.

You can set the timeout to 0 and then people can always edit their posts. If you don't want all users to be able to edit, you can use the Ranks feature of Yaga to change the edit timeout based on per rank.