ESP32 Forum

This is a meta post ... a post about using our forum here.

I'm wondering what our policy is on having "friends of the forum" be able to be given the ability to edit posts made by other users?

It is safe to say that I'm not a fan of the technology being used for our forum. If it were me, I'd convert everything to the Discourse forum engine. In all my travels, this is the best that I have used. However, forums are like colors or fruits ... each of us has preferences and none of them are wrong. (Except khaki and durian for obvious reasons). What I'm finding is that the markup technology in our forum today isn't the easiest to use. It isn't Markdown as found in stack-overflow and it isn't a What You See Is What You Get as might be found in a rich text editor. It is easy for folks to make mistakes ... and that's fine.

However, what would be great is if those who were inclined, could go back into a post and edit the markup (not content) to clean up a post to make it more readable.

Take this post as an example:

https://esp32.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4366

There is a good answer ... but to me it is a little spoiled by not surrounding the response in code tags. Obviously we could spend our time educating users on correct tagging for better results ... and that would be no bad thing. However, I don't see any harm in allowing friends of the forum to go in and edit such posts ourselves.

kolban wrote: It is safe to say that I'm not a fan of the technology being used for our forum. If it were me, I'd convert everything to the Discourse forum engine. In all my travels, this is the best that I have used. However, forums are like colors or fruits ... each of us has preferences and none of them are wrong.

Personally I hate discourse forums.

Personall I agree with Kolban.
We should put this weight off the shoulders of the Espressif team, there is plenty of work for them in the forum anyway.

By the way, things like incorrect tagging, quote marking a novel sized post and writing one sentence as a reply, posting in the incorrect forum section, etc makes me wonder...

BTW a user would more likely use a well moderated and maintained forum than a messy one

Just sayin'

BEN

kolban wrote:....
I'm wondering what our policy is on having "friends of the forum" be able to be given the ability to edit posts made by other users?
...
However, what would be great is if those who were inclined, could go back into a post and edit the markup (not content) to clean up a post to make it more readable.
...
However, I don't see any harm in allowing friends of the forum to go in and edit such posts ourselves.

Modifying the user's post in any way, by anyone (even the moderator/forum owner) should not be allowed on any forum.

The users should have the right to express themselves in a way they find suitable or are capable of, in content, language, word and style choice (excluding, of course, offending/inappropriate words) or (bad) formating.
If the user wants his/hers post to be readable, more useful to others, he/she will put some effort to present it in such a way.
If not, it is his/hers right.

@kolban
I'm quite confident your intentions are nothing but positive (to make the forum better and more useful to the users), but, in my opinion, this is not a way any forum should be run.

Howdy @loboris,

I've personally never been an admin of a forum so can't say what is good or bad but thank you for realizing that my motives are pure. I honestly mean no harm nor any attempt to garner favors or prestige. To me, I'm simply a fan boy of ESP32 and like the rest of us, try and push the ball forward.

As for not editing other folks posts, that is the meat of this thread. I'm a big fan of Stackoverflow and other Stackexchange based Q&A sites. One of the capabilities of those servers is that they go out of their way to encourage and enable community ownership and improvement by their citizen contributors. When one has been a user of Stackoverflow for a while, one is automatically granted a privilege of being able to edit questions and answers. Here is the help on this:

https://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/edit

Again ... every opinion and belief is correct. One's favorite color and fruit is absolutely as valid as the next. My opinion is to allow Q&A edits and yours is not. Both opinions are valid. Would you be willing to work with me and any other person who might come across this forum to determine what the community as a whole would desire?

Imagine we are considering re-decorating a shared room. We have three choices ...

1) Ignore it and leave the room exactly as it is
2) Redecorate such that the end result is exactly as it is now (same color walls, same furnishing etc)
3) Change the decoration (new color, new furnishings)

How do we determine what the consensus of users should be? A poll perhaps?

And I also need to go out of my way to say that this thread is 100% my musings and the owners of the house (Espressif) are the obviously the final deciders ... My loose thinking is that they (Espressif) obviously want the forums to be as usable and enjoyable as possible. If we (the community) have ideas for what we consider improvements, my belief is that Espressif would be happy to listen to us (assuming any ideas we come up with don't cost monies and are in line with Espressif's goals and missions).

However, it starts with an idea, then an idea review, then a proposal and then implementation.

The idea before us is "Allow / disallow forum guest moderators to edit existing questions and answers"

First things first a locked thread in each topic should be placed with general rules for forum usage, and what should be posted to that particular part of forum.

In most forum there is one, I just noticed that there isn't any here.

Rules must be set and written before they can be "enforced" so the new users at least have a chance to read the ethics first, before posting. I usually read them on a new forum before doing anything.

Fyi, even if we're not responding at the moment, I'm keeping an eye on this topic. Curious to see where the discussion leads; if anything, we're open to suggestions.

ESP_Sprite wrote:Fyi, even if we're not responding at the moment, I'm keeping an eye on this topic. Curious to see where the discussion leads; if anything, we're open to suggestions.

I believe the best way to begin with is to really sum up the forum rule and ethics.

The second should be to sum up a bunch of questions that are way too frequently asked but already answered here and make a pinned post about links to those threads so that users can be directed there. This of course should save some time for you Espressif people and for us who are willing to help others.
Also people should also link threads here for asked and anawered questions.

Howdy,
Lets restrict this thread to the exclusive question on "Guest editors for the purpose of polishing question and answer content". The whole story of the forum as a whole is (opinion) a much broader question. I'd invite you to create a second thread if you wish to conduct a discussion on that area in a broader context.