While using the DevForum, occasionally the phrasing of my posts will be edited by site moderators without consent. This really upsets me.
If there is a problem with the convention or wording of my post, instead of directly changing what I’ve written, site moderators should open a message with me to suggest a correction, so that I may change it in my own words.
Otherwise they are speaking through my account, making me look like I’m saying things that I never said. That’s obviously not cool.
This is too invasive, and a big social faux-pas. I’ve already raised this issue once internally. I do not want anyone to be able to speak through my account, for any reason, no matter the intent.
Sages and Post Approval team members might make minor edits to post titles in Platform Feedback when merging in similar topics to make them easier to find for staff and other forum members. This is all to make the category easier to browse and to prevent duplicate posts being made in the future, reducing work for everyone.
If the title edit is minor you will not always receive a message about it since you already get a notification and can review the edit in edit history.
If the title of a post was written by a user, so long as that user’s name is attached to the original post, it should remain as they wrote it.
If it’s then edited by a third party, the edit and editor should be publicly visible, so that at least nobody can alter the words of another anonymously.
This is a personal liberty that we should all be afforded.
But still I believe there should be some sort of Notification because it really, you know some what infringes I would say Privacy. Because any person reading the post would of course say that this post was made by so and so person even when he didn’t say the exact thing and the post was edited by someone else.
Sages, PA and Moderators won’t edit posts with bad intentions. The issue is a limitation of the forum’s software and should be requested on meta.discourse. I believe a possible solution would be some sort of post edit suggestion system that the post author can review and apply or edit.
Another solution would be to show the editors of the post so that the original author won’t be held completely responsible for any inaccuracy caused.
Edit:
While the issue is not completely a limitation of the software, I also agree that members with the ability to edit posts should inform the author before actually applying the suggested edits.
To clarify: the edits made are to improve searchability of posts and to make sure the titles are as generic as appropriate. They are not content edits.
The edit that Soybeen is talking about in particular is this one:
Yes, it’s true, it’s not a so good thing if a moderator modifies a post, I think there’s the need to add a sort of small message sent by moderators in which there are the modifies, and the author can accept or not. Yes is true that are sages for a reason, but it’s still not a good thing.EDIT: Or the same message that has to be voted by at least more than 2 moderator.
This is not about the intention behind the edit, and it is not about whether their edits are inappropriate or not.
The content of a post is not mutually exclusive from its phrasing, you cannot change one without the other by some degree, which is the fundamental issue. It is no longer the Original Poster’s writing.
I don’t ever want to be held accountable for someone else’s phrasing.
You are missing the point.
It’s not about what you edit the content to, it’s that you’re editing it at all.
What you edit the content to can be interpreted many different ways by many different people- as far as tone, meaning, etc. Any information gleaned from a post should reflect 100% of the poster’s intended phrasing, and any edits that you believe would be beneficial in communicating their idea should be suggested to them, not forced upon them.
A completely non-invasive way to organize posts (instead of by their title) could be achieved by tags, or some other form of metadata, so that our posts are not ever rephrased, only re-categorized.
I agree with this fully, I always have a moderator changing the titles of my posts without telling me before doing so, and changing the descriptions of my posts. It’s quite annoying, considering if they mess up in their phrasing people will think it was my doing.
Imagine what would happen if Twitter decided they thought your idea should be communicated via a different Hashtag than you chose.
Imagine what would happen if Facebook decided to amend the content of your Status if they felt it could be phrased in a more clear way.
And, god forbid, imagine a publisher editing the work of an author without getting the changes approved, and then the book goes up for sale.
It’s just not something that happens anywhere, in any industry, because it is a huge overstep.
To answer your question, I think everyone should have the freedom to choose the words in which their ideas are expressed without worrying about them being changed.
We are looking into making better use of tags, but this is a while off since it may require adding new functionality to the forum.
There has been some discussion about making edit history publicly visible (it’s a Discourse feature), but this would be undesirable in cases where posts are edited to remove accidental information that was not meant to be there (i.e. someone accidentally posted some secret info / password / webhook / email address in a picture / etc).
It looks like this is a really sensitive topic to you personally so I apologize for any agitation this may have caused you – this is never the intention of any edits made.
In general, I fully believe any edit made by Sages/Post Approval is made to improve the quality of posts, in one or more of the following ways:
Making the post easier to find for other developers.
Making it easier for product managers at Roblox to find back the post or related posts.
Presenting the title in such a way that we think will be most likely to be taken into consideration by Roblox staff.
Making the title as generic as possible for the scope of the feature, so that we can fit all of the similar concerns and support into one topic, making your feature request / bug report stronger and accumulating like counts / etc.
If you think any edit was made inappropriately (i.e. significantly change the meaning of your post) feel free to reach out to @DevEngagementTeam with a link to the topic. They will then give feedback to the person who made the edit if they deem it was inappropriate. Staff can review edit history of any post, so you will never be held accountable by staff for things you did not write.
Yeah, it’s quite annoying that sometimes the moderators are changing the title of my posts. I mean, I recently got the title of a post that I made changed. But the change wasn’t too big:
Creating posts like a forum in-game How do I make posts?
But yeah, this is quite annoying, and like most of the people here is saying: there should be the post author’s approval for an edition, but in some circumstances, for example:
Ideas for a game
A moderator might see the post, which is about ideas for a game that HE is making, the title will be a bit confusing then, so, in this circumstance, the moderators can send a request to change the title, to Ideas for a game that I’m making.
Well, and now let’s talk about forced title edition, when should be used? In circumstances like this:
Me want create a working door (Bad grammar examples)
I want to make a working door (The title have not a relation with the content in the example thread)
Moderators shouldn’t change a post with their liking, the author of the post have his liking, and there should be respect and privacy with that.
Ah I understand now, so basically you think we all deserve to say what we say without it being changed to fit people’s likings and so on? Like do you feel they are shoving words down your throat?
In these cases, the post should be deleted or hidden from the community until the author removes the offending information, or anything that’s been [Content Deleted] should be shown to them before post approval. It should still not be edited by a third party.
Whether they believe they are improving the quality or not is irrelevant to the notion of privacy.
If other people want to improve on my post, suggest the edits to me so that I may improve it, or critique via another channel.
We may not be held accountable by Staff for the edits they make, but members are held accountable by the hundreds of people who view their posts and think that they’re the sole author.
This is not a post appropriateness problem. This is a privacy problem.
Talking about privacy, someone can’t modify a message wrote by another player, is like muting a person and act like him, I don’t think it’s correct. I think the corrected title should be down the Original. And I’m with the idea that original message never gets modified.(Sorry bad grammar.)
