I've seen forums where it's not possible for you to edit your posts while some allow you a time limit of either 5 to 10 minutes to edit it. Some don't allow you to edit your DM to them too, I can't understand that part as well.

 

How long do you allow your members to edit their post? How about DM editing? Have you used any board where it's not allowed to edit a sent DM?

There is a reason to let users edit their posts. I don't like being in a position where I am restricted to editing my posts. I mean, why would I be denied that right on a site where I posted my contents?

There is a reason to let users edit their posts. I don't like being in a position where I am restricted to editing my posts. I mean, why would I be denied that right on a site where I posted my contents?

There are those who are always of the habit of changing the narrative of whatever they are discussing on especially when it is no longer going their way based on their initial opinion. This is the reason why it is prevented for some people to edit their comment after a certain period of time so that they will stick to whatever they have said before.

I tend to not have a time limit on being able to edit posts for my members unless I have a reason for it, for example, if I find that a lot of people tend to edit their posts to add links a few days later.

 

If I do choose to add a time limit, I make it an hour at most before they can no longer edit their post.

Many sections of my forum need editing to be enabled at all times so users can fix/update their codes when needed since I run a resource board. However, I still allow the editing of all posts at all times. People could drop spam advertisements or inappropriate content in edited posts, but I try to keep a keen eye open for that.

I don’t have a time limit on when users can edit their posts or DMs on my forum because there are users who like to come back and edit their posts, especially artists or programmers selling things in my gaming marketplace. Spam advertisements aren’t a major issue.

I can see why some admins don't want members to edit their own posts, is some cases it's because if the member gets bitter or angry the admin doesn't want the member to then edit all of their posts to a spam post or full of profanities. (I've seen this happen before). This can really mess up the stats if now you have to remove all of these posts on the forum. On one forum in particular I've seen this happen and it was devastating because the member had almost 1,000 posts throughout a few years and they decided to sabotage the forum by editing all of their threads and posts to basically threatening, swearing and spamming the forum. It affected the forum a lot because not only did they have to review EVERY SINGLE post that member had once made they had to basically delete or archive all of the threads and posts.

 

I myself am not sure if I would have time limit on when the member could edit their post, it makes me a little worried because of what I've seen on another forum however I don't think that it's a regular occurrence and because of that I'm leaning more towards allowing the members to edit their posts indefinitely.

 

I have seen forums that only allow you to edit your posts up to 10 minutes after posting and I didn't really see an issue with that either. If a member wanted to make changes after the 10 minutes they would just need to PM a staff member and ask for them to edit it.

 

I think it depends on the type of forum you have and whether or not you find it worth allowing members to edit their posts or threads.

In the past on my big forum I used individual forum permissions (a great feature of phpBB which is probably replicated in most forum software nowadays, but wasn't necessarily 10+ years ago) to set post editing time limits on a section-based level.

 

For forums I thought it was reasonable for members to need to regularly edit posts, I enabled editing anytime, and for forums where I thought editing wasn't so crucial I gave a very short time limit for editing (usually around 30 minutes) just to enable grammar/spelling fixes or someone to add quotes etc.

 

On one of my first forums (a relatively small one) I did have a problem with a member who was very active and then didn't agree with something one day so went on a mass editing spree and effectively deleted all of his content, effectively ruining 25% or so of the forum's content. It wasn't fun, and I wanted to take any opportunity I could to limit the potential for something similar to happen again, hence using those permission settings.

I leave mine set to the stock setting of 20 minutes.

I usually don't have time limits on members being able to edit their posts. However I did put a limit on which membergroups can edit their posts on RPG Haven since I wanted to change things up a bit.

I have mine set to 15 minutes for "untrusted members" (that could be spam bots that edit in a link later) and they're automatically promoted to 12 hours after some time.

 

I haven't set up DMs yet because I haven't seen a problem there yet.

My forum doesn't have a time restriction on users to edit their posts.

So for my site, if you're new user with less than x amount of posts then you'll have only 30mins to edit your content. But once you get passed a certain post threshold then it's unlimited.

 

The reason we have it like this is to help preserve the content so it can help someone later on if they need it. However, because we don't offer a "delete" button, new users will sometimes edit the post to contain "Delete" or "Solved" which doesn't help anyone. We would rather have you reply to your thread saying you solved it this way etc.

Indefinitely. I get it that some things shouldn't probably be editable, but, I know I've gone years before realizing that I made a spelling mistake...or perhaps my opinion on something has changed. I like having the ability to edit for minor tweaks. But something that would be considered a major re-write, I'll just create a reply/new topic. One thing I can not stand is when a forum doesn't allow even a quick edit after you've pressed Reply.