by Kate » Fri Apr 08, 2016 6:55 pm
Something else about this has been niggling at me and I didn't really know entirely why until now. And I'm still getting a grasp on it, so bear with me.
I don't think it should be up to mods to decide whose reasons for editing posts are valid and whose aren't.
I don't want to be in the position of having to say yes to one person, and no to another, based entirely on what I and the other mods deem worthy. Ultimately, it doesn't matter why someone wants to edit something. It's a bit dramatic to say that people who edit their posts out are taking a wrecking ball to the community, and it's also unfair. What if a user doesn't want someone irl seeing their posts? What if they have a falling out with someone on TCS and leaving it up is too painful? What if they really needed to talk at the time, things are resolved, and they're no longer comfortable leaving it up? What if they, yes, said something they regret, and it's been long resolved but the constant reminder of it is painful? If Susan is afraid her ex-husband will find her on TCS and use something she said against her in a custody case, does she wait for mod approval and hope they give it to her? If John is afraid that he's built up his internet presence and a poorly thought-out joke made three years ago could tank his career if people find it, does he get mod approval? And why does he get it whereas Joe made a similar joke and just plain regrets it, or does Joe get it too? If Linda was on painkillers after surgery and a year later comes across that old post and sees it riddled with typos, does that get edited? If someone says, "I feel I can't be a part of TCS as long as this post is up as is," is that a compelling reason in and of itself? Or are mods saying "Nope, I need more than that. If you don't have a stalker, sucks to be you."
Why should mods be in the business of being the gatekeepers to a user's own posts? There are times when a post gets locked from editing because it is in the interest of the site. We don't allow articles to be pulled by their authors, for example, without going through the mod staff to do so (this is one reason why author approval is such an important part of the articles process; we don't want to put anything up that the author doesn't approve of and have them feel like their words were twisted and they have no recourse to remove it).
But does it really serve the site's interests to make every post a restricted post after a certain amount of time?
I get that it's annoying to a lot of people when people edit out old posts, but is that a compelling enough reason to turn editing old posts over to mod discretion? And what happens if we lean on the more lenient side; aren't we left with the same problem, except now the responsibility has shifted from users to mods? Does approval from authority suddenly make it okay to edit things out where it wasn't okay before, or would that just make it not okay in a whole different way? Would mods be required to disclose the reasons why we allowed it, or would it be taken on faith that we determined that the reason was good enough?
And just to make it harder for people to figure out whether to agree with this post or not, I'm doing a break instead of double posting ;)
I can tell you that personally, I have a few things that would make me go back and edit out certain posts, and I wouldn't want to have to go ask for permission to do it just because I don't think it's worth someone else's time to go do it. I have been pretty open on TCS about a lot of my life, at times specifically because of the stigma about talking about them. Mental health is treated by much of the outside world as something that is shameful and I talk about it openly partially because of that, in the hopes that other people will feel comfortable reaching out about it and less like there is something wrong with talking about it. I do irl as well to an extent, but not to this extent. That said, my mother does not need to know the extent of my abuse. My mother-in-law does not need to know how much I struggle with being alive. I have sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law who are teenagers and on the internet, in 10-15 years I'll have to worry about my son finding my online fingerprints (it's not like I hide them well). Do I regret posting that stuff? No. Especially not since I have been told that it did help someone else, and it has led to being helped, and it has led to friendships that I highly value. That doesn't mean that I don't see a day where practical needs will mean it becomes more important to pull it than it does to leave it up. And if I'd never had the ability to edit, I would not have said it in the first place simply because I have always known that it is risky to say it but felt at the time that it was a risk worth taking, and that I could control it to a very limited extent if I felt the need to.
And I know I'm not the only one who has posted things that they felt were risky but knew they had that edit ability so took the risk. I would hate to see people become less open for the sake of keeping things enshrined. Conversations and friendships and interactions don't need to be enshrined to be meaningful and respected. A community is not a thing to put on a shelf and admire. It is to be lived in.