Indication that messages in a thread have been edited

Okay, so I'm mainly just posting this to talk about it, not because I seriously think it would happen. Who knows, though, someone could come up with something useful and Tim might actually be interested.

Sometimes it'd be handy to see not only that there are unread messages in a thread, but that there are messages you already read but they have now been edited. We already have the line thrown at the bottom of a post that indicates an edit time. however, if you click on a thread, you are likely not to notice that message 5 of 20 has been edited.

This is sometimes trivial, sometimes not. The least trivial is probably a TimEdit. Perhaps they are usually trivial enough to not even be worth it. Like I said, I'm just bandying this about.

So, I'm thinking perhaps some kind of visual indicator on the thread list, along with some kind of visual indicator on the message itself (other than just the footer). So like if you go into a 20 message thread and you've read messages 1-18, with message 19 and 20 being new and message 5 being edited, message 19 and 20 would have the blue headers and 5 would have some other color header.

Of course, you're not guaranteed to notice it. Maybe a little footer at the bottom of all posts with an indicator that a previous post has been edited.

Not sure how feasible this is on the programming side, anyway. I imagine Tim just keeps a single number for the last post read (hence the "last read" marker). This would mean recording a "last time read" value as well and checking against that for the edits.

So yeah, just an idea, not really a request. Would be something interesting to keep in mind, maybe.

I get where you're coming from, but it would quickly become onerous with all the "Oops, sorry, double-posted" and "fixing a typo" edits that are all over Talk.

2> Could be. Though I was thinking of something fairly low key. Not big and bold like the unread messages.

Tim does keep* the original of edited posts for 'fact checking' purposes, which may make this more feasible than you first thought.

I admit it would be nice to have, but I'm not sure how 'cost effective' the dev time would be.

*Going to look for a source to back this up.
ETA Can't find it and I'm going to stop searching because of BC's #5 (will he see this edit?)

4> Nah, I think that would probably be not applicable to this. I think the problem would be that the structure right now is simple: For every user, record the last-read message # in a thread. When showing a thread, mark all messages greater than that user's last-read message # in an unread fashion. Ditto for displaying unread message counts on the thread list.

I agree about the cost effectiveness. I debated even posting this, but I thought it was interesting enough to throw out there, even if I'm not really gung ho about spending time on it.

I'm not convinced this would be a very useful feature. I mean, 99.999 % of my edits are for things like typos or left out words that don't significantly change the meaning of what I originally wrote, but that do clarify my meaning. I assume most others edit for similar reasons.

Once in a great while, I do edit and add a sentence or two, which further develops the line of thought... and those very few edits of mine might make the post worth reading a second time, though I seriously doubt it. And if the thread is short, like the 20 posts in your example, I might check out such edits... but if the thread is very long -for example, more than 100 posts- I'm unlikely to read something again that I've already seen before.

I, like Linda, also edit many for typos and other grammatical error corrections and rarely for additions to the message, but what if when you edit a message there was a check box next to the Submit button, which indicated new content?

ETA - typo

>>>...what if when you edit a message there was a check box next to the Submit button, which indicated new content?

Potentially useful - if people would use it. I suspect that many would not.