Allow others to edit your entries

[azurite]

Title:
Allow others to edit your entries

Area:
entries, communities

Summary:
Communities tend to have moderators, and it's often very difficult for everyone to do their job if they can't edit the entries of other moderators on the community they're both in. Community owners should be able to designate who can edit what entries in their communities.

Description:
As an owner of a number of communities on LiveJournal, I've found the need to create a dummy account so that other moderators' personal accounts don't get confused with their moderator duties. If I make a post about the rules of the community, another moderator can't later edit that post, which makes it very difficult to keep a community up-to-date. Rather than causing people to create dummy accounts just so a group of people can have access to it and edit everything as "one" person, why not give the people who are already moderators of a community the ability to edit entries?

I see this as only being something implemented for communities, not personal journals.

Just as we have the option to designate someone's access in a community, why not say what they have access TO DO? If someone is a moderator, you could give them access to edit entries by other moderators (not other posters). Perhaps the original poster could also be notified, and a footnote indicating who last edited the entry and when. Alternatively, someone could make suggested edits, but they wouldn't actually be implemented without the permission of the original author.

I'm hoping that this might make management of larger communities, with multiple moderators, easier, especially since you need to use up an invite code to create a "dummy account." Plus, dummy accounts inflate Dreamwidth's user base unnecessarily. Fellow moderators of a community already have the same access as one another, except for the entry-editing part.

I know some people might dislike this since personal content could be edited, which is why I think it should be something people opt-into, not something forced on all communities/moderators.

Poll #854

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 37

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
9 (24.3%)

Should be implemented with changes.
21 (56.8%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
7 (18.9%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[exor674]

I think this would work for an entry that a moderator can post with a flag "Let other moderators edit this entry", only the original mod can remove the "everyone edit" flag.

But only entries with that flag will be, and will only work as long as the original mod is a mod.

[azurite]

That sounds good! That way, not every entry by X mod is subject to editing by other mods, and the original poster/mod still has control over who can edit that entry (which mods).

[yvi]

Maybe in conjunction with the 'mod hat' feature?

[azurite]

What's the 'mod hat' feature?

(I'm picturing a red top hat next to moderator account names in community info or something like that. Heh!)

[yvi]

Hreh :) It's a bit less stylish than that ;)

It's a planned feature (currently assigned, so it's being worked on, but it may take a while as it's a big project) where mods can mark posts or comments as 'official'.

The 'bug' report is here: http://bugs.dwscoalition.org/show_bug.cgi?id=110 and the spec explaining what it's supposed to do here: http://bugs.dwscoalition.org/attachment.cgi?id=417

I was thinking that when this feature goes live, maybe posts marked as official would be editable by all moderators.

[havocthecat]

I like that compromise! Otherwise I fear some well-meaning mod will edit something into or out of a comm member's post, and then there will be a giant explosion of wank. Unpleasant at best.

[azurelunatic]

*is stylish*

[7rin]

/likes

[stormy]

That would be great!

+1

[cleverthylacine]

That's a problem, the original mod thing. A lot of communities get handed down several times. I've been the third or fourth mod in a few.

[exor674]

First by "original mod" I did mean "original poster", sorry if that wasn't clear, as it was to me.

"Original poster still a mod" is a good idea IMO because if the original poster is no longer a mod, would you want them to have access to your rules entries or the like?

[triadruid]

It made sense to me, but I can see where it would be confusing.

[cesy]

+1

[melannen]

My ideal way to do this was to let a mod actually post to the community under the community's account; it would have the effect of the "dummy" mod accounts without having to actually make a different account, and have the benefit of the dummy account, too, of making it clear that the mod is speaking as a mod. (It could even automatically 'sign' the post with whichever user is using the account. And send comments on the post to all mods.)

(Community accounts can - or used to be able to - vote in polls and other oddities; I'd love to be able to post with them.)

[azurite]

Actually, that was something I thought of after I'd submitted this idea to the community. I'd be just as pleased to be able to post "as the community," enabling just the features you mentioned. If what I said couldn't be implemented, then I'd like the ability for community accounts to work like you said.

[rho]

I agree with this.

[kyrielle]

This would be good.

[triadruid]

That's actually a VERY clean way to do 'mod-hat' posts. Bravo!

[azurelunatic]

Ooo.

[ancientsavvy]

yes, this one

[cesy]

This sounds good, too.

[zarhooie]

I would like to see this implemented where a moderator could edit any post in a community, but *only* if the footer described above was put into place:
Perhaps the original poster could also be notified, and a footnote indicating who last edited the entry and when.

Maybe just adding certain elements to the entry, like or fixing html tags.

[ysobel]

Maybe just adding certain elements to the entry, like or fixing html tags.

FTR: There are already Plans (on which I am woefully slacking) to allow comm admins to add a cut tag or change the security level for entries in the comm.

[azurite]

Yeah, I read about those in the Difference from LJ post. I definitely think those would be helpful, but my suggestion (and the alterations mentioned by other users) would kind of expand upon that idea, allowing for more effective moderation of communities. Communities usually have posts made by mods that might need to be edited at a later date, which is what this suggestion pertains to.

[ysobel]

I know :) And I love the idea of having a "other admins can edit this post" flag or somesuch. Was just pointing out the existing (limited- and different-scope) plans, since not everyone reading this entry would be aware of it.

[zarhooie]

I know that, but I just wanted to mention it here for people who are not you and me. <3

[cleverthylacine]

I'm of two minds about this.

One of the reasons the LightningWar mods retain passwords to all the game journals is because occasionally someone will do something like post an RPG entry with the wrong game date on it, forget to cut a 90-paragraph post, forget to put a warning on an NSFW post, misspell a character's unfamiliar name (say Endymion or Sharolt), or something like that--not out of malice, but out of forgetfulness or out of habit (i.e. they wouldn't warn for explicit vanilla sex in a story in their own journal, because it isn't shocking or squicky, but we warn for all explicit content because people read us at work and we don't want them to open a sex scene there without realising it). So we do in fact go in and open up those entries and fix them.

I can see why a comm moderator would want that ability in a non-RPG comm as well--often, there are posts that aren't actually trollish, so you don't want to delete them, but you want to cut them or put warnings on them.

At the same time, I see a lot of potential for misuse for this feature because you can essentially use it to put words in someone else's mouth. I get why you would want to let the original author approve it, but if the original author is available within a reasonable period of time, you don't need to go in and edit their posts in the first place--it wouldn't be helpful to have to wait several hours or days until someone in another timezone gets back online to fix their page-breaking 1200x900 graphic of their dog or add a dubcon warning to their fic which starts out tame and then 3000 words in, WHAM, suddenly you're in the middle of a near-rape scene with no warning.

I'm not sure what dummy accounts have to do with this. To the best of my knowledge, moderators can't edit other people's posts and haven't been able to for years, even on LJ--that's why the RPG I mod has been collecting passwords for years.

IDK. It seems with opt-in/opt-out it would be a pretty useless feature--the people who are most likely to defend their right to post untagged/unwarned-for stuff in communities are least likely to agree to let mods edit them. And as someone who's been trolled a lot and had words put in her mouth/selectively edited by FW seemingly a billion times I'm sensitive to why people don't want mods to edit them. :/

[azurite]

Actually, I wasn't suggesting this feature for community MEMBER posts at all-- only one mod editing another mod's account.

Here's my quandary: I run a fic challenge community that I'd like to port over to DW. We have a number of posts that, on LJ, are made by a dummy mod account that all the mods have access to (the mods are also members under their own personal accounts, but they don't have any mod privileges using those accounts). These posts include things like the Rules, a FAQ, the theme set lists, and so forth.

The whole point of having multiple mods in such a comm is that when one mod is not available, another can approve claims, clear out old claims, add new tags to our list, etc. It's very difficult to do this if the mods are posting using their personal account, thus making it impossible for another mod to edit those posts later on.

What I am proposing is some way that fellow mods can edit each others' posts. The suggestion that the community account itself be allowed to post would likely solve this whole problem; give certain users access to "Post As [Community Name]," and edit posts by the community account, and voila! All the posts a community needs to run, plus access for the mods to keep it running efficiently. Barring that, the original suggestion with the ability to display "Last edited by [User Name] on Date/Time" like forums do would be helpful. That way there's no concern for "Hey, but I didn't say that!" Of course, the question would arise, just what did X user change about Y user's post? Having a "history" and such would turn journals into wikis, and I'm pretty sure we want to avoid that.

For things like you mentioned, I'll usually just comment on the post as a mod and ask them to tweak the entry. Most people do so without complaint.

[azurelunatic]

The "dummy accounts" bit -- I read that as a shared-use, shared-password admin journal, used as a workaround so anyone with access to the account can post/edit.

[azurite]

Yup, pretty much. What I did over on LJ was, for the community 30kisses, a dummy mod account called 30kisses_mod. All the users who were mods had the password for it, and could thus log in, post as 30kisses (with custom icons to designate which mod was posting, though some of them did forget from time to time), edit posts made by other mods that had been logged in as 30kisses_mod, and so forth.

It's a workaround, but a very inconvenient one, since it means people have to logout and start a new session, remember a new password, and of course, use up an invite code here on DW.

[denise]

I'm going to call this suggestion "deferred", because we have some changes to the community maintainer model planned (and some ways to let maintainers do some of the things I think you're getting at here) -- we'll come back and look at this later. :)

[azurite]

Good to know! I'm looking forward to seeing how DW handles community maintenance, because that's really the only thing stopping me from opening a bunch here!

[azurite]

I'm wondering if the changes you mentioned have a bugzilla or other URL attached to them. I know this is deferred, so I was wondering what changes/plans they're being deferred for, and if I should put the complete creation of a community on hold while waiting for them to get phased in or not.

Fingers crossed, because I'd really love to contribute to DW more! :)

[denise]

It won't be soon -- I haven't quite figured out yet what the best way to handle it will be, so I haven't opened a bug for it yet. I know the end result I want, I just don't quite know the best way to go about it, both from a code standpoint and a UI standpoint!

[azurite]

Do you recommend I hold off on porting the community over to DW then, or should I create a dummy mod account and do it the way I do on LJ, and maybe get a few invite codes for allowing mods or anyone else who may want to transition/also join DW from LJ? I just feel like if I keep doing nothing, it'll never happen.

[denise]

I would say the best option right now is to create an admin account! That should work to do just about everything. I'm hoping to have some better solution within the next year or so, but I would hate to have it hold you back!

[azurite]

By "admin account," do you mean another account for the community, e.g. if the community is 30kisses, then I create 30kisses_mod (which is what I did on LJ, and what I was considering here for DW if there was no other option for the foreseeable future), or something else?

Thanks for responding so promptly, I appreciate it!

[denise]

Yup, that's exactly what I mean! It's kind of annoying, I know, but it will prevent problems if you wind up with multiple admins (mods) in the future -- you can just share the password if it winds up that you have multiple admins before we have a better comm admin model put in place.

[stormy]

I'd definitely add that you should most certainly trust anyone you give that admin password to in the future. It is quite possible for them to kick you out of account by changing the password and off of your own community. I've had instances where I was kicked off of communities I created or was moderator of, and told that since I was not on the moderator list - tough luck, basically. Not here, but on Livejournal.

I'm not sure if there's a way to track (aside from IP, and that isn't always reliable since the argument that you could have posted from that IP has come up to me before, too) who was using the account when a situation like that happens.


denise,
I do look forward to community administration changes, though. We have a 9,000 member community on Livejournal that I'd love to have over here instead since I no longer use LJ. I'd love to see the moderators have responsibility, but the extension to edit something in conjunction with the 'mod hat' idea posted at this comment.