Communications Officer Editing Abilities

[ABC]

I propose that communications officers in all regions be given the power to edit RMB Posts as well as being able to suppress them.

Take for example this RMB Post in TNP.

Though it is very helpful, it still quotes the original offending post.

If Communications Officers could remove this from the post, they could keep the helpful input but get rid of the link from the offending post.

[USS Monitor]

This would be very easy to abuse. My feeling is that the potential for abuse outweighs the benefit.

As of now, nobody, including mods, can edit another player's RMB posts. We've talked about giving mods the ability to do so, so that we could remove rule-breaking material without suppressing the whole post.

However, if we grant that power to anyone -- whether it's mods or COs or whatever -- we need to have a way to log who edited what. If you or I go and edit someone else's post to say something offensive like, "Gas the Jews," there needs to be a paper trail so the original poster does not get blamed for our edit. I don't think any of the current mod team would do something like that, but it was still decided that we would need an edit log.

The need to log everything makes it more work to code.

Allowing regional officers to edit posts would make logging even more essential, since regional drama is a thing. Some officers would use it responsibly in the manner you described, but others would use it in other ways.

It would also raise some other concerns. If a raid hits and the raiders suppress a bunch of posts, you can unsuppress them and get your RMB back once the raiders are gone. If a raid hits and the raiders edit a bunch of posts, replacing the original content with their own propaganda, there is no way to retrieve the original content when the raiders are gone.

Even if we took steps to protect against raid-editing, native officers who abuse their power could still cause some really ugly regional drama.

[Cresenthia]

This would be very easy to abuse. My feeling is that the potential for abuse outweighs the benefit.

As of now, nobody, including mods, can edit another player's RMB posts. We've talked about giving mods the ability to do so, so that we could remove rule-breaking material without suppressing the whole post.

However, if we grant that power to anyone -- whether it's mods or COs or whatever -- we need to have a way to log who edited what. If you or I go and edit someone else's post to say something offensive like, "Gas the Jews," there needs to be a paper trail so the original poster does not get blamed for our edit. I don't think any of the current mod team would do something like that, but it was still decided that we would need an edit log.

The need to log everything makes it more work to code.

Allowing regional officers to edit posts would make logging even more essential, since regional drama is a thing. Some officers would use it responsibly in the manner you described, but others would use it in other ways.

It would also raise some other concerns. If a raid hits and the raiders suppress a bunch of posts, you can unsuppress them and get your RMB back once the raiders are gone. If a raid hits and the raiders edit a bunch of posts, replacing the original content with their own propaganda, there is no way to retrieve the original content when the raiders are gone.

Even if we took steps to protect against raid-editing, native officers who abuse their power could still cause some really ugly regional drama.

Has the possibility of showing the original post somewhere been brought up? Perhaps by clicking the edited timestamp, it might also show previous versions of the same post, but I of course have no idea how technologically feasible or infeasible that would be.

[Frisbeeteria]

Has the possibility of showing the original post somewhere been brought up?

Yes. Maintaining an edit history would be a significant alteration of the RMB code. It's not currently preserved, so we'd have to add an entirely new bit of code. It's not that high a priority to justify the admins spending loads of time on it..

[ABC]

Has the possibility of showing the original post somewhere been brought up?

Yes. Maintaining an edit history would be a significant alteration of the RMB code. It's not currently preserved, so we'd have to add an entirely new bit of code. It's not that high a priority to justify the admins spending loads of time on it..

True, but it wouldn't be too different from how suppressed posts can be expanded to see their text. I'm saying this without knowing much about the NS Code so this is just a guess.

[Phydios]

Yes. Maintaining an edit history would be a significant alteration of the RMB code. It's not currently preserved, so we'd have to add an entirely new bit of code. It's not that high a priority to justify the admins spending loads of time on it..

True, but it wouldn't be too different from how suppressed posts can be expanded to see their text. I'm saying this without knowing much about the NS Code so this is just a guess.

How is hidden text "not too different" from nonexistent text? The implementation of an edit history might look similar to the suppression feature, but the problem is writing code to store that edit history. That's what Fris said.

[Imperium Anglorum]

Even if we took steps to protect against raid-editing, native officers who abuse their power could still cause some really ugly regional drama.

Deletions do that now. There was some chap in the Europe RMB who said something offensive, was quoted, deleted it, and then proceeded to claim that the person who quoted it made it up as part of a conspiracy against him. Adding more ability to make things like that happen seems to me, a bad plan.

Where things are suppressed and quoted, I've defaulted to suppressing posts which quote suppressed posts. Not entirely elegant, but certainly, I think, better than opening editing powers which could easily be abused.