Proposal: Nothing major, but I'm thinking maybe add the feature of modifying our own comments like how we can modify questions after they have been asked? Because I find that at times when I have answered a question with a long reply that involves a lot of LaTeX that although I can right click to copy, I find myself thinking that it would be easier to just modify it the old on rather than recreating the old one and deleting it afterwards.

Question

lgbasallote · Answer

proposals are trending nowadays huh

anonymous · Answer

lol...I saw Hero do some and thought I would try one :)

karatechopper · Answer

Y not just delete comment then rewrite? although..it would be easier to modify..

anonymous · Answer

I answered that above? If i have a really long reply and it uses a whole bunch of LaTeX, it can be a bit troublesome to rewrite it.

karatechopper · Answer

oh ya. lol

anonymous · Answer

+1

hero · Answer

@Calcmathlete, I'm always doing proposals.

anonymous · Answer

I suppose...anything can always be improved to something else :)

hero · Answer

Theoretically, yes. Of course, this too has been proposed once. You'd have to debate with @shadowfiend about it.

shadowfiend · Answer

Our reply to this has always been that we view question responses as real-time conversations that share more with chats than with forum threads. As such, we see the regular flow resulting in a correction in a subsequent response, rather than producing a single edited correct reply that may be left behind as the conversation moves forward.

Ironically, I think facebook added comment editing precisely when their real-time features made it less useful than it would have been in the past, since chat rules started applying there as well.

anonymous · Answer

Editing with a time limit? Perhaps you can only edit your comment inside of a few minutes.

lgbasallote · Answer

i usually take 5 minutes to write my latex... (i've gotten rusty)

shadowfiend · Answer

Eh, I dunno about the time limit. It's not a horrible idea, but it runs into the same problem. Some discussions move pretty fast, so even a time limit may not be worth enforcing. The only thing I could think of would be only allowing you to edit if no one else has replied, but that's still a bit weird.

To boot, it's tough to tell sometimes when a post has been edited if there's a subtle difference, so if the person who's learning is reading as you go, it's better to follow up with a correction, or they may miss the correction altogether.