Updating OP on concluded threads for future reference


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Would it be possible to add a feature to the forums to Update the original post in a thread?

My other thread, 'Gluing Splash Weapons together', has reached a resolution and has devolved into light exchanges, banter, and repetition. I'd like to be able to update the first post with a TL;DR section with a brief summary of the following conversations, so that people who have similar questions or opinions don't have to dig, or post without reading.

If a feature won't be added for regular users, could a moderator take a pre-written statement, and add it on my behalf?


There's a website feedback section of the forums for this but... normally its bets just to let nature take its course. You can hit the /o button to hide the thread if you want.


Kjatan wrote:

Would it be possible to add a feature to the forums to Update the original post in a thread?

My other thread, 'Gluing Splash Weapons together', has reached a resolution and has devolved into light exchanges, banter, and repetition. I'd like to be able to update the first post with a TL;DR section with a brief summary of the following conversations, so that people who have similar questions or opinions don't have to dig, or post without reading.

If a feature won't be added for regular users, could a moderator take a pre-written statement, and add it on my behalf?

First, that's a great sentiment on your part.

Second, my usual approach is to favorite the post that seems to "answer" the thread the best. For PFS-oriented threads, I will often put a summary post at the end of the thread that captures the discussion.

Community & Digital Content Director

Heya, users don't have the ability to edit original posts past a brief window after they're posted. We have considered cases like this however, and have had some discussion about feature implementation for appending posts, but nothing conclusive or that we can formally promise that we're going to do.

Can you email community@paizo.com with the text you'd like appended for us to review? We're really leery of editing people's posts unless it's to redact sensitive information/copyright violating content, correct BBCode tags, or update dead links.


So now that the central question of the OP has been answered, can the OP be updated for future reference?

;--)(--:


I've got two issues with the premise (which is clearly well-meant).

First, things change. As new materials are released, as FAQs are posted, as errata are released, what was true sometimes ceases to be true. Having an immutable "answer" kind of defeats the point of discussion in the first place.

Second, interpreting "the result" is very, very often personal. Sure, in some threads "can my PC take a 5-foot-step if they are wearing shoes?" gets answered very quickly, and without debate. In those cases, the threads die quickly and finding the unanimous "yes" posts is trivial. It's the acrimonious long-standing debates like "can I treat a reach weapon as an improvised weapon to attack someone within the you-cannot-attack-this-close range?" that need a "the answer" post, because they're pages upon pages of those wrong people saying "yes", and those right people scoffing at those posts. <Grin>

I don't think there's an elegant way to deal with those two issues. Just because the original poster is sold on "the answer" doesn't make it correct, and underlining a resolution may be unfair.

As much as I hate the pseudo-social-networking "favorite" idea, that might remain the best choice. Maybe if the OP for each thread could get an automatic hyperlink to the (three? five?) posts in the thread that have the most favorites... that might work, sort of. Could be abused, but in theory it'd provide direct, trivial means to get from a question, to a handful of posts that more people believe are useful than the rest. Saves wading through pages of stuff looking for the gems the community have decided are important.

The only other way - and I dislike this - would be to let an OP post an "addendum" 1.5th post, that shows up before the 2nd post does. Let that be eternally editable by the OP and you've got your solution. It's got down-sides too though. You'll see threads about "my proposed new class", and they'll use the "addendum" to display the "latest" version of their homebrew whatever, and all of the discussion below will make no sense at all, because what was in 1.5 will have been changed repeatedly.

Meh.

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