UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums General Off Topic topic editing timeframe

what's a reasonable timeframe for people to be able to edit their posts?
I have mine currently set for 24 hours.

what about requests to delete old posts?
I ask because recently someone was giving me grief because they couldn't edit/delete a 5 year old post.

is it wrong when I tell people I won't delete their account if they have posts associated with it?

some forums set the post edit time to 20 minutes, others to 1 hour. and some allow a longer period to allow the OP to make corrections.

its all about allowing the OP to post something. have a bunch of replies based on that post added. and then the OP changes their post to something else. and the people who replied now feel abused because their answers no longer match what they replied to.

there is a "report" button which i find useful for submitting requests to have a certain post updated, moved or deleted.

as for when a user asks to have their account and posts deleted; this can be handled several ways. personally, i grant their request, but keep their posts, and have them all marked as created by "unregistered." so the actual content is kept, and the conversation flow is not destroyed.

continuing...

ultimately, its your choice in how you want to manage your forums. there are no set guidelines which you need to follow, other than "be consistent with your end users."

in one forum i manage, i allow posts to be created by unregistered anonymous users. i also dont allow posts to be edited past 1 minute on that forum. it use to be that i didnt allow post editing at all. but users wanted a way to quickly correct a typo they noticed right after pressing the submit button.

again, this is only on one single forum that i manage. my other forums are all set for about 2 hours of time before a post can no longer be edited.

In my forums I allow for the users to edit a post for 1 hour and do not allow them to delete their posts.

As far as deleting an account I made a group called suspended and all the permissions are set to 0 or -1. I then wipe the account information and change the email address to one of my crap email accounts, turn off all notifications, and remove their avatar and just leave their name associated with their posts. I only do this if the user request their account deleted.

For permentaly banned users I pretty much add them to the banned list, put them in the suspended group, and turn off all notifications to their account. I only ever had to ban less than 12 people since 1998.

this is why I had originally set such a short edit timeframe, because of abuse like that.

so people can't claim some weird privacy issue or something because I refuse to delete posts or accounts, I'm not legally obliged to do this in any way am I?

I like this idea a lot! Its quite a bit of work, but it keeps a good "paper trail," while giving the end user what they want... need


Do your forum rules state that whatever (non copyrighted content) is posted, becomes owned by the forum owner? Are you allowing the user to edit and delete the content later if they choose? What is written in your privacy policy? How to you deal images and text that is copied from another website -- is it attributed?

I suppose some "googling" could be done on this topic, and you could form your own set of rules. Different countries handle things differently depending on where your "business" is based out of.

My edit time is a day, delete is a day.

My rules say, the content belongs to the site, and the account is yours.

Please delete my account, no problem the content and user name stay.

Personal details are deleted with the account.

I get them to email the request, so I have a paper trail. No good as a private message if the account is gone.

Oops this page was open on my other device, only upstairs realised it's a month old. Lol.