What grinds my gears on the forum

no i see and well i feel its worth writing regardless about the only time i dont is if i think im going to get scolded or corrected on a public platform thats what honestly deters me most of all. i feel anything can still be worth writing even if it may not be worth reading and visa-versa it just depends on the context thats what i feel is most important and how its conveyed and taken by others. but that just my opinion everyone wants to be understood even if its hard to understand ya know, people like me with autism in my friends group for example and others sometimes treat me differently i feel but they dont know any better and thats ok im accepting of that . so i dont feel its right to treat them less but again just my opinion. lets all work together to be more accepting of others would sound nice but its a very imperfect world maybe one day lol . i can at least dream

Ultimately it’s your decision how you want to write.

But the quality and quantity of help you get will be reflected in the ease it is to understand what you’re trying to convey.

Make it harder, and you won’t get as much help - and you’ll almost certainly get criticism for it from people who don’t understand that you (apparently) don’t care if people are willing to step up and try to read what you’ve written in order to help.

The bottom line is this: If you make it harder for those who are here to help to actually help you, they’re generally going to skip over something they can’t understand and go help someone who asked a clear question and provided the information they needed - and if the person asking the question didn’t know what info to ask, they asked about it.

When I open a bug, for example, I always provide as much information as I can, and I will then say “if there’s other information that would be useful, please let me know what and how to obtain it, and I’ll provide it.”

The onus on being understood is entirely on the writer, not on the reader. To be understood, you have to know your audience and appeal to them.

Otherwise, don’t be surprised if what you’ve taken the time to write gets ignored (and when it gets ignored, of course nobody’s complaining - because they’re not even bothering to read it).

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yea i agree it is my decision and all and the consequences that may come with the territory. and yea making it harder for others dose denture them but i feel a bit more effort can sometimes go into things that i personally feel can be overlooked like small things especially if the cost is not helping others over something small. people will live life how they want to and do what makes them comfortable i say you do you just as long as it dose not hurt others along the way big or small.

And part of those consequences are that some are going to ignore it, and some are going to criticize you for writing something that they tried to understand and felt wasted their time.

If you’re going to take responsibility and ownership for those consequences, then it’s not really fair to then complain about it when it happens. That’s like touching a hot stove and then complaining that you burned yourself, even though that’s what happened the last time you did it.

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On #2 the 10 seconds edit time-out, I wholeheartedly agree.

The only reason I did hear is that changing a message could derail reactions on it. On that:

  1. That is the reason it is always good to quote relevant spinets on what you react on
  2. Discourse will show the message is changed in the top right of the message and using some clicking you can even see the old message so nothing is lost.

Screenshot_20241020_221117

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It’s a 10-minute edit window, not a 10-second edit window. :slight_smile:

Yes, the edit history is visible, but the effort of going back to look through a long discussion and adjust for all the edits can be pretty significant.

If one makes a mistake, a follow-up after the 10-minute window is up quoting the bit to be corrected with “here’s what I intended to say” doesn’t break the flow and makes it clear that it’s been edited, even for those unfamiliar with the platform.

Nobody’s expected to be perfect, so going back and editing a message from a day ago, a week ago, a month ago…Why? Just reply with the updated information, and then everyone knows what the updated information is.

Leaving the window short makes it easy for everyone, instead of assuming that everyone’s going to quote (not everyone does), and that when reading a quote from a message that was changed, they know to look at the edit history.

So, no, we’re not likely to change that.

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people will choose to ignore it we all pic and choose we are human lol and thats fine they can criticize all they want but they too have to deal with the fact that i or others may criticize them for reacting in a way that may indict a negative response thats life and we all have to deal with it on both ends. its what we choose too do with our decisions that affect others that dictate where we may stand next to others in life. good or bad ^^

And, naturally, if things start to get out of control (or look like they will), then forum moderation staff will step in and put an end to it. I would strongly advise that a course of escalation is not going to be a fruitful approach.

It is probably more productive to take the criticism on board, understand what you’re being told, and adjust rather than to continue to fight every time someone says “I can’t understand what you’re saying; it would help if your writing were clearer”. Responding with “the point of communication is to communicate” overlooks the entire idea that if you want to communicate, it is the author’s responsibility to communicate effectively.

If the author fails to do that, and someone complains about it, if the author then criticizes the feedback as “unnecessary”, ultimately the author is going to be ignored and end up wondering why nobody’s willing to try to help.

A wall of text is not going to get many, if any, useful replies. Fact of life. Trust me, I’ve been at this for over 30 years. I’ve literally seen it all. I had someone once ask a question (and I’m not kidding or being hyperbolic here in the slightest) that, in its entirety, was “my things broke”. I think the subject line was “Help”.

That was it. That was the entire message. No context. No idea what the “thing” was. Nothing. Three words. That was it.

How do you think people responded to that question (aside from the obvious inappropriate comments that were inevitable with that wording)?

For my part, I asked for some additional information and clarification. I don’t recall if I ever got any (I don’t think I did).

My point is, again, that if you take the time to write something, if you think it’s worth writing, then it should be worth reading. And if it’s worth reading, then it’s worth being understood. So start by writing something that’s easy to read and understand.

Otherwise, consider again whether it’s worth writing in the first place (or, alternatively, write it for yourself in an openoffice document or text editor of choice). But if it’s worth writing somewhere where others are going to read it, put in the time and effort to create something that is easy to read.

It doesn’t have to be perfect. You’re not writing technical documentation, so if you don’t use the Oxford comma, nobody should complain (but if you were writing technical documentation and I was your editor, then I’d be telling you to fix it :wink: ).

I’ve said all this before in this very discussion.

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Mix of Complaint 4 and Complaint 5.

I just want to add my two cents as a new user and beginner. I once had an issue here, where I was told, that I was using my computer and system wrong. I went on with it and adapted - I had to reinstall my system (it is Linux after all).
Other people started having the same problem, and the same individual gave the same answer. After a while it turned out, that in the end, it was not my/our fault but a serious bug.

It was kinda frustrating in the first place, because as a newbie, I do not know that much and I am still discovering things. I don’t really have the knowledge to decide if the answers thrown at me are relevant, or might be wrong, so I kinda have to trust everyone.

Another thing was different approaches - some people wanted me to try things that weren’t based on my initial issue, and I really had to insist not to try out new things, with the risk of just bringing in new errors by installing other packages or bricking my system even more. It is really disconcerting as a beginner, and I don’t always have the necessary discernment to know who I should trust and which advice I should follow.

In the end, I don’t want this to feel like a pointing out or only a rant. I am really enjoying everyone’s advice and company on the forum and I am thankful for everyone who has helped me and invested time into my issues. It just can sometimes be really overwhelming.

Unfortunately, that’s sometimes the nature of the beast. I don’t believe anyone intends to give bad advice, but when a critical bug gets through the QA processes, it’s not always obvious until well after reports have started to come in.

If the bug were known before release, it would likely have been either fixed or documented.

It is unfortunate that you came away feeling like you’d been told you were using your computer/system wrong - with so many different cultures represented here, things don’t always translate well, but yeah, “blame the user” isn’t something that should be acceptable to the community. Some grace should be given as we’re all “learning”, and it’s easy for those of us with tons of experience to forget that we once were “n00bs” once upon a time.

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I have experience with a much longer edit time-out of at least a week on another forum I frequently visit. Based on that:

  • Only less than 1% of the posts are edited.
  • Most users even do not know or did never edit a message
  • I sometimes do look on what is changed and never had the opinion it was bad.

So the point you give is pretty hypothetical to me.

Why 10 minutes is bad for me is that I typically do not reread my own message within 10 minuten, more likely with my next visit and that can be 1/2 days later.

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The problem can be that with a longer edit window, the greater potential for the thread to move on with other replies, and then the delayed edit may alter the context, or information that would have changed the discussion. in the extreme it may even render the replies that followed nonsensical in their own right. It is best to correct mistakes, clarify further etc with a subsequent reply, so that the conversation flows logically/temporally.

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Let me be clear before I get into this: I’m speaking here based on my personal experience, and not on behalf of the openSUSE project or even other forum staff here. Some may agree with me, and some may not. These opinions are my own personal opinions, formed over a lifetime of experience moderating and participating in online communities going back to my early teens using BBSes accessed with a 300 baud modem. (I am officially an “old greybeard” - literally :wink: But make no mistake - I am no luddite who resists change; I have spent my life on the cutting edge of various technologies. But I’m not a fan of “change for the sake of change” either.)

I can only speak for my own experience over many decades and having, at my peak, replied to over 600 messages a week in a technical support forum that had zero message edit functionality, not even for staff (we could remove messages, but not edit them).

Over those literal tens of thousands of messages I wrote, I was not 100% perfect in what I wrote. Nobody ever had an issue with me correcting myself - least of all myself. We’re all human, and we all make mistakes.

I got in the habit of reviewing my writing every single time before I hit the “post” or “reply” button. These were not “thanks for the feedback” or “glad I could help out” responses (those weren’t generally counted in the stats). These were deep, technical discussions about serious mission-critical software issues.

I do this with e-mails, I do this with forum posts, I’m doing this right now (this message will probably have had at least 3 edits made before I consider it final, and I’ll read it over in its entirety one last time before sending it, I guarantee - and sure enough, here I am in my first - and second - editing pass, confirming this. :wink: ).

And yet it may still not be 100% perfect, or include everything I may want to say on the matter.

But if you read something you wrote an hour later, a day later, a week later, and think “oh, I wish I had said [this]”? So what if you can’t edit it? Just reply to it with your clarification.

Our “best effort” changes from day to day, and that’s human nature. It’s not necessary to “hide” that by editing what was previously written. Were it a mailing list, you wouldn’t have the choice to edit at all. Once it’s out there, it’s out there. Same with NNTP [1], same with many other pieces of community management software and infrastructure.

We are approaching 50,000 registered users here. There’s no edit time period that will make everyone happy. So we’ve picked something that allows for a quick “whoops, I fat-fingered a word” or “I hit ‘send’ when I wasn’t actually ready to”. For 99.99% of users, that’s been just fine - and that, in my experience, is fairly typical.

For everything else, there’s “quote the bit you misstated and write a clarification”. Then it’s clear to one of the literally millions of monthly views we get from anonymous users that a correction was made, and as a writer, you gain the reminder to review before pressing ‘send’.

In woodworking, there’s a maxim: Measure twice, cut once. I always took that to be more general advice, better stated as “review your work (or plan) before committing.”

The Discourse editor allows you to “close” a reply without committing it, and to come back to it later for review and to finish/edit it before you post it. That is also a useful feature.


  1. Yes, I know about NNTP control messages; that’s not the same thing, and implementations vary. ↩︎

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Impressive story, good read.

I likely started with a 2400 baud modem but not that active in BBS or forums at least until Discourse.

Apart from this forum I have experience with two more fora.

The fist forum was a forum attached to a cycling advocacy organization. They were early in switching to Discourse, I guess >10 years ago. For me that switch meant that I became much more active on that forum, I became 1 of the 2 "power-users:. Small community feed by “blog post” of the organization that indicated you could react via the forum. That triggered nice policy discussions. The other visitors came to get advised on a new bike.

The organization had no real IT person so the default edit timeout, that defaults to 86400 minutes (2 months). and used that semi-often to correct/improve things. About a year ago the forum was closed as there was no IT person anymore.

The other forum is the OpenStreetMap forum. That switched that discourse March 2023, 4 months after Opensuse. For both this forum and the OSM I have been way more active after the switch.

What I like about the OSM forum is the default edit time-out and administrators actively splitting off discussions if that was appropriate/requested.

One observation is that at least some people like to point out errors in posts even in public (complaint 1) and yes it is “cruel” if you then can not correct things. I think people correcting themself is something good. You can always, with some effort, check the original message.

An observation is that vBulletin had no editing functionality and this forum had I think initially something like 10 seconds but now 10 minutes so unless you have experience with another forum there is no way of knowing the effect of large editing time-outs. On both other forum I never seen edits that were “inappropriate” so I do not see what you loose extending the edit timeout or using the default time-out.

Let’s do an experiment, please vote:

  • I have no experience with long edit time out but I think it is a bad idea
  • I have no experience with long edit time out, I think it is a good idea to try
  • I have experience with long edit time outs and have bad experiences with it
  • I have experience with long edit time outs and I think it is fine
0 voters

For the poll a long timeout is >> 1 week.

vBulletin had a 10-minute edit window, and that was carried forward here. It’s never been “10 seconds” (the configuration doesn’t even permit a sub-1-minute configuration, as it’s in “minutes”).

Historically, we didn’t permit it in vBulletin because we had a gateway to NNTP, but since that sync triggered every 10 minutes, we opened it up to a 10-minute edit window. It occasionally created issues, though, because the windows weren’t aligned.

Sure, we can have a poll on it, but we’re not going to change it.

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