Unpublishing a Post
catherinem
June 09, 2010 at 07:21 AM posted in General DiscussionVia xiao_liang: Yea, and I can't delete them :-( There is no pencil icon, and the pencil icon the posts page just takes you to an edit function.
xiao_liang
June 09, 2010 at 11:12 AM
Of course!
http://chinesepod.com/community/conversations/post/8643#comment-180332
zhenlijiang
June 09, 2010 at 10:34 AM
It's not that rare I guess. I would go and edit the post I made--add to it, to let everyone know the question I'd asked had already been answered elsewhere, and post a link to that discussion.
That's not cluttering up. My post will fall away soon enough if it's resolved or no longer relevant. And if there is any more contributing to be done when the question's already been fully answered, sure, I would go to the existing thread to pick up the discussion there.
xiao_liang
June 09, 2010 at 10:26 AM
Ok ok, I get it, you're right, of course. Let's say though, I posted a question, and noticed then that someone else had asked the same thing and had it fully answered. Is it better to leave my post to clutter up the boards, or delete it and contribute to the existing thread?
It's rare situations like that one and the multiple post ones that make me want the security blanket of a delete option. However I agree with everything you've said.
zhenlijiang
June 09, 2010 at 09:45 AM
Right, that's why I said not at all essential.
Why do you want to be able to delete your own posts later? Things like accidental multiple postings admin can take care of in the morning (well, afternoon, if not the morning).
I have posts I'm not proud of in my history here, but though they make me look bad I'm not going to take them down to manipulate the image other people who weren't there when it was happening can form about me. Other poddies have taken the time to contribute in it. And I did say those things.
P.S. The other thing is--as ridiculous as it may seem to someone like you--the odd spammer or user-gone-bad could abuse the ability to delete posts. An offensive comment you can only leave up (there are technical loopholes, but not to get into that) for a maximum of 15 minutes, unless you want to leave it out hanging with your name on it for all to see. An offensive post, if we were able to unpublish, could stay up much longer, say all through the night, and be taken down before someone in CPod comes into the office the next morning to find it. * The way Catherine explained it it seems like admin will still be able to see unpublished posts even if we users can't on the boards though.
Of course this kind of thing is not the norm. But I don't see why we can't all just think hard before we post, and live with the posts we did make. We've always been able to edit them later. That we need to be able to do.
xiao_liang
June 09, 2010 at 09:27 AM
Well, I did say only "kind of" essential :) I realise it's not been normal here, but it is really normal on every other message board on the Internet...
I understand your point though. I agree, there are more pressing fixes, but it's nice to know it's in the pipeline.
zhenlijiang
June 09, 2010 at 09:23 AM
A post and the ensuing conversation is actually a historical document XiaoLiang. We didn't have the ability to delete our posts before in an official sense, and I never heard complaints about that before this recent mess with the multiple postings. That leads me to believe it is not at all essential.
xiao_liang
June 09, 2010 at 09:16 AM
Well, it's a message board, not a historical document. The ability to delete posts is completely normal and although rarely used, kind of essential...
zhenlijiang
June 09, 2010 at 08:06 AMI really don't mean to be a troublemaker, but want to say I consider the ability to unpublish / delete our own posts to be neither priority nor a given user right.
The only reason XiaoLiang and others recently have been having problems is the problem with the Posting (resulting in unintended multiple posts). When that is fixed, we have no problem.
Isn't it already enough for us to be able to delete our comments within threads within the 15 minute window, and edit our posts? Being unable to delete / unpublish our own posts later keeps us more thoughtful. The prospect of taking the time to read and write responses to someone's post that could at any time be obliterated (for all intents and purposes) now gives me pause. I may be much less inclined to respond to user posts (or is that a good thing ...?). Really, this is a "privilege" we don't need, that isn't going to do the Community much good.
* Having said this, I did delete a recent post of mine asking for a load of spam to be removed, to test if the procedure Baba and RJ were talking about worked (it's a strange and very unintuitive procedure, but it worked). Xiaophil had made a comment there, and I should have made sure with him first if it was OK. Sorry about that Xiaophil. I won't do that again.