Timwi <timwi@...> writes:
I do think these are two seperate points:
- how to improve the discussion pages on a wiki
- whether each author own his/her comment or not.
But the point is that the answer to the second influences whether the solution proposed for the first is seen as an "improvement". I feel that if the ability to edit other people's comments is taken away from me, I can't label it an "improvement".
You may not label it an improvement, but there are others who definately would.
Discussions, OTOH, also involve personal opinions. Danger lies ahead
when
the opionion can be changed, but is still labeled (or signed, if you wish) with the original authors name.
We already have this "danger", and we've had it since the beginning of Phase II, and it has not turned out to be a great problem, so this is not an argument.
I've had people complain to me about moving their comments around on my LDAP patch's page on meta. I erased one person's edit because it was a non-working solution, and had a complaint about that.
Just because you don't think this is a problem, doesn't mean it isn't a problem. I can definately see lawsuits based upon this. This is definately a valid argument.
Just imagine that this discussion we have is on a wiki, this is the
latest
edition (you would need to check the history, aka mailing list archives to see the full revisions) and it contained:
On Tuesday 01 November 2005 17:36, Timwi wrote:
Any model, if over applied, is harmful.
Agree. I am strongly in favour of LiquidThreads.
See the danger?
A fallacious argument by false dilemma, or by lack of imagination, or whatever you wanna call it. You almost provided the answer to this one yourself:
(for the record, the above quote of three lines was written/shortened by me, not Timwi).
And that is what it should say.
COMMENT #328645 by [[User:Timwi]]
Agree. I am strongly in favour of LiquidThreads. (This comment was last edited by [[User:Tels]] <date/time>.)
If <date/time> is a minute ago, I better check the diff. If it was an hour ago, I can probably assume that your edit was harmless.
Therefore, again, your "danger" is not an argument against the ability to edit comments.
Why can you assume that the edit was harmless? During katrina, I had no internet access for weeks. If someone maliciously edited some of my comments during that time, would you assume that what was there is actually what I wrote?
Ignoring catastrophies like a large blackout, or a hurricane: say someone goes on vacation, or simply hasn't checked his discussions recently, or if an article's discussion page hasn't been updated in a long while, and someone stops checking it as often; in these cases, vandalism may go unnoticed for QUITE a while, where readers may be seeing the vandalised version for the entire time.
In this aspect, there is "danger" in others editing comments.
If we can improve the discussion page itself, *and* prevent misrepresentation at the same time, well, that would be great :)
It's really easy.
Timwi
I think the original idea of LiquidThreads is a good solution for the problem. I don't believe the implementation would be easy though ;).
Ryan Lane