Lane, Ryan wrote:
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.
I know that. I was only pointing out that the two points mentioned above (can't check who they were from because you haven't replied to the thread properly and have instead started a new one) aren't separate.
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.
There are also complaints about edits to articles that are accurate and NPOV. That doesn't mean they (the ones complaining) have a right to claim ownership over something. Ignore them and get over it.
Just because you don't think this is a problem, doesn't mean it isn't a problem.
So far I have addressed only the "problem" of people not knowing whether what they are reading is really what the author wrote. People complaining about edits is a whole other matter. To address that problem, we must think about why they are complaining. I am convinced that the large majority of such complaints are solely out of irrational, thoughtless behaviour: people just assume that they "own" their comments by default, and complain about any form of "tinkering" even when it's perfectly legitimate if they thought about it for only a second. Surely you can't agree to let this kind of stupidity take precedence over our wiki philosophy.
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.)
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?
And you think you're the only reasonable person in the world and everyone else only makes bad-faith edits and vadalises your comments. Get real. People already _do_ malicious editing, and other (well-meaning) people revert it. It's already happening, on all wikis. It's one of our very own Replies to Common Criticisms™!
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 the original idea of LiquidThreads is a good solution for the problem. I don't believe the implementation would be easy though ;).
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.
Timwi