# How to Fix FurAffinity's Comment Editing System With One Small Tweak



## Dolphanatic (Jul 21, 2017)

Here's a situation a lot of us have probably experienced at one point or another: Let's say you're on the main site and you post a comment on someone's art. A few minutes later, you notice that you made a mistake. Maybe you accidentally forgot some punctuation or you misspelled a couple words. No big deal, right? You look for the button to edit your comment like usual, but soon realize there is no opinion to edit it anymore. That's because 5 minutes just passed and now your comment is permanently stuck the way it is. Not too long ago, I learned about this the hard way while proofreading a comment I had just posted a few minutes earlier for any typos or grammatical errors, only to find out that I couldn't edit the comment anymore and the only way to change it would be if by some chance a site moderator were to come by and fix it for me. A lot of people have brought up these issues with the comment editing system before in the past, but not much has been done to fix the problem so far.

As of right now, this is a basic summary of how it currently works: 5 minutes after posting a comment on the main site, the comment will lock down, preventing you from editing it, meaning that you only have that long to spot any typos or grammatical errors or whatnot. This means that if you later notice something in your comment you'd like to edit, there's nothing you can do about it. It's now permanently stuck the way it is and all you can do hope a moderator comes by and helps you out.

Then there's the whole awkward ordeal involving "hiding" comments, which is next to useless and makes a mess with the whole "this comment has been hidden" text that sticks around. I understand there have been some issues in the past revolving around people deleting comments, but that's not something that can't be fixed. Simply eradicating the option to delete your comments altogether just opens a whole new can of worms. What if you accidentally double post or something? Now the only option at your disposal is to hide the comment, which, like I mentioned earlier, leaves a mess behind. Can't there be a better way to take care of these sorts of things?

Thankfully, I think the answer is yes. Take YouTube's comment system, for example. There, you're allowed to edit your comments whenever you want. However, as a means of making said comment's edited status visible, a "This comment was edited on" date stamp is added after doing so. If you want an even better example, look no further than these forums, which utilize a very similar system. In other words, we already have a fully working comment editing system here on FurAffinity. If it can work successfully here on the forums, I don't see why it wouldn't also work on the main site as well.

For the record, I actually think FurAffinity is a solid website overall. It just has some room for improvement, that's all. Thanks for reading! I hope you guys take some of these ideas into consideration. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.


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## Uluri (Jul 21, 2017)

I do believe the Time limit is to help prevent any problems with Auction type Commissions like YCHs and Adopts. People later editing their bids after they've already put down a price. It also prevents harassment via comment editing. If you really want to make sure what you are writing is what you want people to read, folks should proofread their comments a little bit before sending out. Maybe step away for a moment and re-read it later. 

Not sure exactly what you are getting at for hiding comments, though. Are you talking about hiding your comment to write a correct statement? Because it was ten times worse before the 5 minute editing thing was incorporated into the site. Not sure what you mean by the function is useless either. People comment some pretty nasty stuff on some folk's pages and art from time to time, so the remove comments thing is pretty handy for the artists who don't want a big nasty comment on their stuff causing trouble. So yeah, getting rid of hiding comment will be a huge problem. As for double posting... I usually use the 5 min edit time to put something else in there. "oops, double posted." It's no big deal.

I am currently quite okay with the current editing system for comments.


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## Dragoneer (Jul 21, 2017)

The way the current system works...

You have 15 minutes to edit your comment after initially making it.
If someone responds to your comment you lose the ability to continue editing.


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## jayhusky (Jul 23, 2017)

If I could make a suggestion in line with the comment editing/overall system?

I'm currently very happy with the way it all works, BUT, with a caveat, could 2 changes be made to it?

1) If a comment is hidden on a submission YOU own, you should be able to see it (albeit with a special marker saying "this comment was hidden/deleted")
2) Instead of a multitude of "this comment has been hidden by its author/page owner/administration", could a counter be placed saying 105 comments / 4 hidden?


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## Dragoneer (Jul 24, 2017)

jayhusky said:


> If I could make a suggestion in line with the comment editing/overall system?
> 
> I'm currently very happy with the way it all works, BUT, with a caveat, could 2 changes be made to it?
> 
> ...


There's a few other things I'd like to change with it. If a comment HAS a reply it shows the "comment removed". If the comment DOESN'T have a reply it does not show the comment removed.


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## Uluri (Jul 24, 2017)

Dragoneer said:


> The way the current system works...
> 
> You have 15 minutes to edit your comment after initially making it.
> If someone responds to your comment you lose the ability to continue editing.



My comment editing time period has always been 5 minutes only, though. It's been that way since it became a feature.

*Update:* I hope you don't mind, but this got me curious. I asked my watchers in a journal how long their edit time was, and got 5 minutes from them as well.


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## jayhusky (Jul 24, 2017)

I get the same, 5 mins to edit.


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## Dragoneer (Jul 26, 2017)

Uluri said:


> *Update:* I hope you don't mind, but this got me curious. I asked my watchers in a journal how long their edit time was, and got 5 minutes from them as well.


Hrmm. Apologies on that. The 15 minutes may be an admin feature.


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## Dolphanatic (Aug 12, 2017)

Uluri said:


> I do believe the Time limit is to help prevent any problems with Auction type Commissions like YCHs and Adopts. People later editing their bids after they've already put down a price. It also prevents harassment via comment editing. If you really want to make sure what you are writing is what you want people to read, folks should proofread their comments a little bit before sending out. Maybe step away for a moment and re-read it later.
> 
> Not sure exactly what you are getting at for hiding comments, though. Are you talking about hiding your comment to write a correct statement? Because it was ten times worse before the 5 minute editing thing was incorporated into the site. Not sure what you mean by the function is useless either. People comment some pretty nasty stuff on some folk's pages and art from time to time, so the remove comments thing is pretty handy for the artists who don't want a big nasty comment on their stuff causing trouble. So yeah, getting rid of hiding comment will be a huge problem. As for double posting... I usually use the 5 min edit time to put something else in there. "oops, double posted." It's no big deal.
> 
> I am currently quite okay with the current editing system for comments.



I'm all for allowing users to delete their comments. The problem is that the system we have now only lets people hide them, which still leaves behind a "this comment has been hidden" message, like a lot of people here have mentioned already.

As for the issue with people editing comments for bidding on commissions brought up earlier, that could easily be fixed by showing a "this comment was edited on [datestamp]" footnote below any edited comments.


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## jayhusky (Aug 13, 2017)

Dolphanatic said:


> As for the issue with people editing comments for bidding on commissions brought up earlier, that could easily be fixed by showing a "this comment was edited on [datestamp]" footnote below any edited comments.



Edited comments actually carry an icon which show they were edited (and someone please correct me if i am wrong), when hovering over that icon, it should show the timestamp of the edit as well.


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## creamlapine (Aug 17, 2018)

I would agree with the suggestion of the owner of the submission being able to at least see who left a comment and then hid it. I have seen several artists have people bid on an image only for the comment containing the bid to be hidden. This resulted in the bid being raised up with no risk at all to the person doing it. Not only that, but it seems that someone has been spamming submissions with comments then hiding them right away, leaving behind multiple "Comment has been removed by its owner" lines. It really needs to be fixed.


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## SSJ3Mewtwo (Aug 25, 2018)

Closing this due to necro.


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