I'd like notifications when someone edits their post

[Washerhelp]

I get notification on all new posts, but can I get notifications if someone edits one of their posts?  I've realised it's easy for someone to be able to get past moderators and admins with innocuous posts and return later when the topic has sunk out of sight to add spam links or inappropriate content? In a busy forum it might get noticed, but on quiet forums like mine or on unpopular topics it would go unnoticed.

I would hope it's easy enough to do. We can already see if a post has been edited if we are reading it. It might not be for everyone so an option would be good. I don't expect many people edit their posts at all apart from not long after posting it. But if someone edits a post say weeks or months later it would be good to be able to know so I can check it out.

[Aiwa]

Set a time restriction on editing, say an hour.

After an hour, no editing possible. 

[DawPi]

You will be able to do it with this mod:

 

[MMXII]

Actually I like this suggestion. You can get notifications regarding almost everything, but this is missing. Especially since there is an option to limit post editing time, there should also be one for keeping track about what is happening while editing is still possible.

[Washerhelp]

On 9/8/2018 at 4:33 AM, Aiwa said:

Set a time restriction on editing, say an hour.

After an hour, no editing possible. 

Thanks. I didn't realise you could do this. It's a workaround of sorts. Unfortunately it would restrict genuine users from being able to edit something for perfectly legitimate reasons. If the feature doesn't become available I might try setting restriction for something like 24 hours. I would hope it doesn't apply to administrators because I need the option to edit posts I've made on my own forum indefinitely.

[Aiwa]

The controls are at the group level. You can have administrators, or long term members, etc. bypass the restriction or make the restriction time period longer. 

You can use group promotion, after someone gets X posts, promote them automatically to a group that is less restrictive, etc. 

[Washerhelp]

Just a quick update to say that this has now happened to me a couple of times since posting this request. I have to confess I didn't get round to restricting the amount of time that someone can edit one of their posts as kindly suggested in one of the replies above. Needless to say I have set it to one hour now, which I presume and hope means that no one can edit any of their posts at all after one hour has past.

As I speculated when I originally posted this issue it is a very clever and devious way to introduce spam. I appreciate that most spam is probably automated but if someone wants to do it manually it is very easy to edit one of their posts at some point after - potentially be even weeks after when the post has dropped down out of sight.

Here's an example of what happened to me. Someone posted a question on my forum, I answered the question. Then a couple of days later they just log back in and added some spam links to their original post. The underlined text in the screenshot are links to spam sites.  Because no further activity happened on the topic it was undiscovered until I stumbled across it by accident.

I still think an administrator should have an option to receive notifications if a previously legitimate post is edited in order to prevent this sort of thing. It may be rare at the moment but it may also be something that is set to catch on and become quite prevalent. For now I have set limitations for editing at 60 minutes which hopefully will prevent this happening again though.

 

[tonyv]

3 hours ago, Washerhelp said:

Here's an example of what happened to me. Someone posted a question on my forum, I answered the question. Then a couple of days later they just log back in and added some spam links to their original post. The underlined text in the screenshot are links to spam sites.  Because no further activity happened on the topic it was undiscovered until I stumbled across it by accident.

Wow, that's pretty disgraceful. Thanks for the heads up.

Another one that could be worth watching is the user who joins and does nothing. I have some of those. It takes a bit of effort to join my site -- you have to write to me first -- and I have some users who have gone through the trouble of doing that only to do nothing after they've registered. Whenever that happens, I wonder whether the user is just laying low for a while before returning to start posting spam.

[Black Tiger]

I wonder whether the user is just laying low for a while before returning to start posting spam.

This method is used for a longer time already. At least I started seeing this on multiple forums since a couple of years now. Users register and do not post or some normal post. Then after some time they start spamming the system. Or they just create 5-7 random normal looking post so they bypass flood checks.
Benefit of this that this are mostly no bot's so it's not happening a lot.

However, I still don't understand why people get so many time to edit their posts. On my forums it's 5 minutes. Because mostly there is no reason to edit. If you want to add more, post it below in a new post and it will automatically be merged due to the automerge function which is set to an hour.

You could see this as kind of an edit time, because it will become 1 post due to the automerge, but they can't change their original text anymore.

I would love tho see some security option like vBulletin had. Which is that you can set an edit time to any time you want, but as soon as someone reply's to the post, the edit time is instantly closed, no further editting is possible for the original post. This is also great for when users have a discussion and afterwards they are going to change all kinds of things so the discussion totally gets out of context. That's a big disadvantage.

And I don't see -any- benefit in keeping an edit permission open after a reply has been made, neither for an indefinite time. So limiting edit times is one of the first thing I do.

 

[tonyv]

39 minutes ago, Black Tiger said:

However, I still don't understand why people get so many time to edit their posts. On my forums it's 5 minutes. Because mostly there is no reason to edit. If you want to add more, post it below in a new post and it will automatically be merged due to the automerge function which is set to an hour.

While I totally understand that a short edit time (or an edit notification) is a great way to minimize spam, we do need it to remain an admin adjustable option, and I'm the right person to answer your question as to why this may be desirable. 😉

My forum is a writing forum where members post their literary works. A huge part of writing is revision. I'll often go back and edit stuff I posted even ten years ago. I'll do it in my topics (in the original works), and I'll even do it in my replies, not exclusively for the benefit of a topic's participants who would receive a notification when a new reply is posted, but for clarification purposes for anyone who might come by and read the topic. I'll do this anywhere I write, even here, for example, whenever possible, if I come across a particularly embarrassing mistake. 

My community is small, and it's a good group -- there's no trolling, etc. -- so I like to give the members reasonable benefits, little rewards whenever I can. I enabled the "edit silently" feature so that they, themselves, can decide if they want the "edited by" line to show. I personally like a clean look in my topics and posts. Very rarely will I leave the "edited by" line, only when it serves a special purpose.

[tonyv]

I just edited the "edited by" line when I noticed that I had typed "edited by' ...

[Washerhelp]

Hi tonyv. Yes I can see how you would need longer editing times. The main thing is that the people running forums need the option to limit the editing time as in the vast majority of cases such as ones described by Black Tiger there is no need to edit a post after it has been replied to other than if someone spots a spelling mistake etc. This is presumably why the edited by notification was relatively recently introduced so that people can't change what they put to make a subsequent reply look weaker or pointless.

I think that if Invision are not wanting to introduce a notification about when any post is edited after X amount of time they should maybe at least reduce the default amount of time for editing or as Black Tiger suggested lock editing once a reply has been added. Of course if administrators are aware of this potential issue they can quite easily change editing times themselves, but the problem is that this kind of spam is very sneaky and relatively low-key but potentially quite damaging and most people are not aware of it.

[Adriano Faria]

I had a plugin in IP.Board 3.4 to notify people who liked a post when its author edited it: https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/399236-notifiy-users-when-author-edits-the-liked-post/

I can update do IPS 4.4 but I see 3 situations here:

- notify people who liked the post

- notify people who follow the topic

-notify people who replied in the topic

 

Which one?

 

 

[Matt]

I think the suggestion was for a moderator to be notified when a post has been edited.

If the concern is spam, then I would maybe look at only notifying on edit if links are added or changed.

[Washerhelp]

That might be a good compromise. I've just had confirmation from someone at tech support that it's a common thing now where people manually join up and post apparently legitimate contributions - but including spam links. It's clear that it's only a small step to get these people to join up and not post any spam, but then edit their posts later when the topic has sunk out of sight to include spam. These links could go completely unnoticed. 

I'm currently using the workaround suggested earlier to limit editing of posts to 1 hour after posting. It's not ideal because it restricts genuine users, but I'm a lot happier knowing people can't add spam links to older posts. I think if someone edits a post quite some time after it has been finished with and adds links it is very suspicious and I would like to  be notified to check them. I've had several cases recently where people have joined my forum manually and posted completely legitimate questions but just with 3 spam links - all of which got through Invision's spam detection. 

[Day_]

If it’s just to stop spammers why not setup a new users user group, same permissions but can only edit posts after 5 minutes. 

When they reach 50 posts for example, automatically promote them to the main user group where you have no edit restrictions.

I had a member that through tantrums and asked for their accounts to be closed, when informed all their posts would remain they went and edited the last 100 or so with a middle finger image. 

Did find it slightly amusing at the time, but annoying, since then I have had a 5 minute restriction for everyone. Had no real complaints although it’s not a community that needs to revise 10 year old posts. 

[KT Walrus]

For me, I'd rather see the Edit button change to an Update button after an hour or two. The Update button would only append the update: to the post body and generate a new reply that is a copy of the updated post body (so the topic shows as being updated in the forum index). 

That is, the Update would update the post "in place" but also append a new reply (that contains the original post and the appended update) to the topic at the end of the topic.

So, Update would be like posting a new reply, but readers of the original post still see the updated post. Sort of a hybrid Edit/Reply action rolled into one.