Ryan Lane wrote:
It isn't that people wish to "own" their comments, but that people believe their opinion should be represented as they wrote it.
That's the same thing. Or it comes down to the same thing, namely a strong objection to anyone editing one's comments. As you said, it's a belief -- not an argument.
I believe there is a fundamental difference between an article, and a discussion. I don't understand why you should need to edit someone's comment, other than possibly spellchecking it. When you edit someone's comment, you are changing the discussion as a whole.
Primarily I want for people to be able to edit out offensive remarks and personal attacks. The only people who would object to this being done would be the people who would make such remarks and then scream blue murder when they're removed. Clearly we can live without them. Secondarily I want to be able to fix spellings, in the faint hope that it will help some people learn better spelling. Again, the only people who would object to this would be people who can't spell and are therefore unsuitable for writing an encyclopedia anyway.
I've heard many reasons for maliciously changing a person's comment, but can you give me some examples of non-malicious changes?
I've heard many reasons for maliciously changing an article. Yet articles on Wikipedia tend to get better. Interesting, innit?
I can definately see lawsuits based upon this. This is definately a valid argument.
I'm finding your "lawsuits" claim highly dubitable, and your repeated misspelling of "definitely" quite irritating. Are you a lawyer? (You're clearly not an English teacher, so the chances of you being a lawyer are somewhat higher.)
Oh shit, I mispelled a word, I must be an idiot. Do you always resort to flame-style tactics?
No, the purpose of this was to test your reaction. You fell right for it exactly the way I expected: you picked up only on the emotional side of the paragraph (taking it as an insult) and responded only to that. You didn't address any of what it actually *says*; in particular, you haven't answered my question. Are you a lawyer?
And this highlights what I mean: you (and many other people) only object to being able to edit comments because it somehow "feels" wrong. You can't really say why it *is* wrong. You just think that it will "somehow" change the comment "and hence" the entire discussion, "and therefore" it must not be done. Same with the malice argument: people could edit comments maliciously OMG that's bad "and thus" the whole idea is really bad!... Get my drift?
There is a difference between an article, and someone's comments on an article. The article is a community written piece. Someone's comment is not a community written piece, it is an individual's written piece. The discussion as a whole is a community written piece.
In order for the discussion to be a community-written piece, the community must be able to intervene when something (or someone) in the discussion is (or becomes) disruptive. Not letting people edit comments paves the way to flamewars, trolling and (dare I say it) just another clone of Usenet.
In this aspect, there is "danger" in others editing comments.
You haven't shown any, except for the possible "lawsuits" claim. Do you have anything substantial to back that up?
I think there is a danger in changing the meaning of a discussion by changing the meaning of the comments contained within. Whether this is done maliciously or not, it can be harmful.
Notice how you haven't answered my question again?
I believe a rudimentary implementation would be relatively easy, but it would be laborious, and so, few people will be willing to work it through until the end, and so, it will likely not get done very soon. A _good_ implementation (UI-wise as well as performance-wise) is quite a bit more challenging, so it will likely not get done at all.
I don't disagree entirely with you here; it probably won't get done. However, every large piece of software is laborious, and there is quite a bit of software out there that has been written (take mediawiki for example).
What I meant was, a _good implementation_ won't get done. MediaWiki has been written, yes, but it's a rather bad implementation.
Timwi