Jan-Paul Köster wrote:

I think the core question in this discussion is not "Can people change other peoples comments so that they contradict the original poster's point of view?" but the question is "Do people actually change other peoples comments so that they misstate the original poster's point of view, and are they successful or are those changes quickly reverted wiki-style?" The answer to the first question is clearly "yes" which sufficiently explains why many people are afraid of it happening (one side of the posters here). The answer to the second question cannot be given very easily but from my experience the wiki system generally works also in discussions. So can the wiki system be abused? Yes! Is it actually being abused? I don't see it.

It's rare enough on en: that people are outraged if refactoring is abused. Changing others' comments tends to just not happen - not because of technical constraints, but because it's considered rude to change others' signed comments. So yeah, assuming good faith works here.

I'm really not convinced this whole forum idea isn't a solution in search of a problem. Every web forum I've ever seen is a bad recreation of Usenet. And for Usenet, we already have the mailing lists through gmane.

- d.