Some would even keep the original text intact and state corrections at the bottom, which renders a worse reading experience, in my opinion.
Sometimes I edit so fast after I published that I doubt anyone has read it before I edit.
So, should I really make an "EDIT" disclaimer all the time here on HN?
IMHO, no.
Personally, I only add an EDIT disclaimer if I'm substantially altering the original post. For me that usually means adding additional explanation / context / citations / etc. below the original content. I'd say I rarely change a post in a way that radically alters the meaning of something I already said. But if I do, I'll add an EDIT marker.
I definitely don't bother with that for fixing typos, simple grammatical errors, punctuation, etc.
no
edit: yes if it's significant.
Yes, you should. It's a matter of maintaining intellectual honesty. If there's any chance of your post having diverged from the post that someone is replying to, even if the divergence is as small as a single-letter spelling error, you should call that out.
Sometimes I edit so fast after I published that I doubt anyone has read it before I edit.
Why don't you write your posts out in a text editor? That way you don't have to constantly edit and revise in a browser text box.
Unfortunately some mistakes or better ways to word your expression are visible only after posting. (Yes, I edited this reply at least 3 times. I don't believe my edits changed my intention though.)
Comments edited after they've been read get flagged, and people tend to explain the flag to remove suspicion of nefarious backediting.
It's a habit that goes back decades on e.g. web forums and editable comment sections; some forum software automatically marks a post as edited, sometimes adds a percentage how much was changed, and leaves an edit log for moderators. They add form fields so people can indicate what they edited, or add a grace period (setting) that avoids adding the 'edited' marker if edited within a set amount of time after posting (for e.g. typos).
TL;DR it goes back a lot farther.
It's common (the use of “EDIT” to flag edits generally, not necessarily the practice of doing it for trivial edits), IME, in most discussion fora where comments are editable, and has been longer than Reddit has existed.
Reddit came into being ~2008-9 so this practice of EDIT: blah goes back at least a decade before then.
though maybe it was already possible to edit FifoNet posts? not sure
The only time I would do a disclaimer like that is if an edit made a substantive change to the meaning of the post. For example, if I included a quote from a source that was subsequently shown to be out of context.
And yes, that editing includes this comment. I've edited it as well (9 times now, I think, could you imagine me writing 4 to 5 edit disclaimers every comment? I know I can't). What I simply can't stand is a blinking cursor and then needing to read my text. I like to read my text in the presentation as others see it, which is why I edit so much. It's a quirk I have, I don't see any issues with it. And even if others see issues with it, I don't think I'm going to change the way I write comments.
After an hour you can't edit anyway, so I always view comments over an hour ago as "canon".
With that said, sometimes it can be useful to indicate that you've edited. This is especially the case when someone quotes you and you've deleted that text, stuff like that.
- Simple typos or a dropped word can significantly alter the meaning of a post. I once wrote a post where I said one thing, yet a single sentence appeared to say the exact opposite (either due to a typo or dropped word). I doubt that many people noticed it or, if they did, they would recognize the error for what it is. Still, you never know.
- Something similar can be said of grammatical errors. Grammar conveys meaning and ambiguous/incorrect grammar leads to ambiguous/incorrect meaning. Again, edits will alter the meaning of what is said even if most people would have interpreted what you said as what you meant.
I have noticed some edits as an acknowledgement to someone who noticed an obvious error, that is just a courteous thank-you. There's nothing wrong with that.
Also, quoting is common here. Editing the original without noting the edit leads to confusion as to who made the change. Usually it won't matter, but it is good to point out the edits in case it does end up being significant.
> In my profile, what is delay?
> It gives you time to edit your comments before they appear to others. Set it to the number of minutes you'd like. The maximum is 10.
I used to do it wayyyy more, but now try to restrain to important edit notes like "turns out I'm wrong as the reply mentions, don't believe this comment, leaving original below for posterity"
Don't forget if people don't add edits, you wont know. I think on average I edit a comment 5-10 times to get the wording right, my first drafts are usually far worse than the guff I actually leave up :)
Pro tip to edit types: HN lets you delay your post becoming visible, get all your edits in before it goes live. It's controlled by the 'delay' option in your profile and is measured in minutes
The big thing is: It's hard to imagine all the ways a change can conflict with replies, and the HN crowd is probably more likely than most to "know what they don't know" (i.e. more likely to play it safe).
So I suppose you could say my policy is a sort of subjective, probability weighted policy, based on the expected probability of my edit leading to A. a misunderstanding and B. that misunderstanding being one I would care about.
> My impression is sometimes we could just edit typos and small stuff, without the need to make a disclosure at the bottom.
Yes, I would generally agree with this.
> Some would even keep the original text intact and state corrections at the bottom, which renders a worse reading experience, in my opinion.
This is a grey area for me. It's somewhat hard with HN's formatting to transparently and clearly fix the original text sometimes. Example: "I do agree" -> "I do not agree", do you put "I do (EDIT: not) agree", "I do not agree (EDIT: previously typo'd that I do agree)", "I do agree \n\n EDIT: I actually do /not/ agree, that was a typo", etc. I think people that leave the original text and then add a disclaimer/correction at the bottom are attempting to be open and transparent and I respect that. There used to be an HN plugin years ago that did edit diffs on comments (displayed them kind of like git diffs) and I do kind of wish HN would show edit history. I've been burned by replying to a comment that gets edited out from under me such that by the time I comment they are no longer making the point I'm rebutting or they've softened/changed their argument. Because of this I often will quote what I'm replying to in these cases to protect against the author changing their comment and making mine look odd/out-of-place.
> Sometimes I edit so fast after I published that I doubt anyone has read it before I edit.
I think this is fine, as long as you aren't changing the spirt of the comment. Typos, link adding (if fast enough), and similar are fine to do without calling out the edit.
Should every minor little thing that has been edited by mentioned? Maybe not. Would different people consider minor to mean different things? Maybe.
Also edit potentially "vary" posts leaving old answers untouched underneath making the conversation potentially hard to read for someone coming late.
Correcting simple typos and misspellings is also always fine.
iow Do No Harm
Mostly, I’m sure, they don't.
But you only notice the people that do.
Edit: I am in the former camp
People vastly overestimate how much other people care about what they have to say.