hey i have a suggestion. It's a good thing to be able to edit your posts quickly especially when you realize you need to add something or remove something. However, i've noticed that people can edit their posts even after somebody has posted a message after them! This defeats the whole purpose of forums. At times i read a message and after replying to it, i see that the part that i replied to is gone! it feels like i'm seeing things! would it be possible to prevent people from editing their posts once somebody has posted after them?

I think after 60 minutes you are not allowed to edit the post yourself. You have to PM a moderator in order to edit the post.

This is good because it helps the SEO, at least I think so.

I didn't know that you were not allowed to edit your post after someone posts..

you ARE allowed to edit after someone else posts. in my opinion you shouldnt be able to!

Thank you for the suggestion and the feedback Machinated.

When I set up the forum, I set it up so that no one can modify their posts after 60 mins. (Beyond that, if you still wanted to edit something, you'd have to contact a moderator to do it for you).

In the past, some of our regular/senior members, especially the ones that post code samples, suggested a little bit more time to edit their own posts since typos can easily creep into their posts/replies. The setting was reset to 90 minutes.

If you can edit your first post in this thread, then please let me know. Something may have been modified while I was not looking.

Bobby, SEO is not the reason for restricting members from editing their own posts here (after the first 90 mins.). It's because these pages here start to appear on SERPs and it will be very irritating for a surfer to find edited information that does not match their search phrase. e.g. Imagine you are searching for the phrase "best book on java +forum" on Google and you click on the No.1 result to some forum page only to find the original poster has edited his post and left behind a link to a porn / casino site!?

- That's what I meant. It is SEO so SE will FIND the correct information. It is optimized in SE now that you cannot edit it.

- Doesn't the 90 minute rule work well enough? I would hate not being able to edit a post after someone else posts after me.

if someone else posts after you, a lot of times they will be replying to you. it'd make the other guy look foolish if they replied to your post and then after reading their post, you are able to change your own post. doesn't seem fair. besides you can reply with another post.

I understand your concern machinated, but you must admit that situations like this crop up rarely, if it does.

Disallowing the previous post from being edited simply because it now has a reply may be a good idea (I see your point) but this means I have to hack (modify) the forum script to achieve this - which, I am unable to do at the moment.

I would think that there is already a hack made for this. But I would advise you do not add this. I change my posts a lot after I see how stupid I worded them, or how misleading they were, or a link I forgot to include.

It would just be another PM to a mod asking them to make a change.

Yes, I see your point too, Bobby. I will take this into consideration. Thank you.

I'm leaning toward mech's feeling. It may not have happened here yet, but I've seen it on other forums. It's annoying to point something out in a reply only to have another reply ask what you were talking about. I remember it really heated up a thread or two earlier this year.