Lock post for editing

[Ozzy47]

I think there should be an option for staff to 'Lock a Post', which means that the author of that post isn't able to edit or delete it anymore.

 

[Mouth]

Seems likes such a niche use case, better of asking for a 3rd party add-on to be created.

 

[Ozzy47]

It's really not as niche as you think. It was a standard feature in phpBB, and admins used it quite often. The same functionality is already applied to locked threads.

It would be useful in cases such as when a staff member edits a users post, they can lock the post preventing the user from going back and removing the staff members edits.

 

[S Thomas]

I don't think either that this would be a niche use case. Like in many threads it's important to protect at least the first post, either after a certain period of time or manually. Killing the first post also kills the whole thread.

 

[Ozzy47]

Don't forget to like the first post of you support the suggestion.

 

[spider]

Although it would I guess on most communities not be used that often I can see the potential value of this. Whether it should be part of the software or an addon though I am not sure about.

 

[Abraham54]

My members have a 30 minutes window to make alterations, deleting a discussion is not possible for my members.

 

[DragonByte Tech]

This would be immensely useful for us. We had an issue a couple months ago with a customer who opened a new Feature Request @ our site, and when I told them it was a bit complex so it would take me a bit of time to implement, and gave them instructions for a manual work-around, they opened a PayPal dispute after editing every single one of their posts to read "never mind".

Thankfully, XF2 has a very nice system where you can instantly revert a post to a previous state. Thanks, XF
(PayPal also found in our favour both in their original complaint and in their appeal - where they changed their story from "I never received the item" to "significantly not as described" )

I had to change the edit limit on posts down to 5 minutes, but that has the unfortunate side-effect of making it so users can't edit their threads to correct errors in their thread fields (f.ex. they provided a fake URL when asking for support).

In short: Having an on-demand "lock for editing" would be very helpful in case someone else tries to tell porkies to PayPal in order to get their $35 back.


Fillip

 

[spider]

I did think about that use too, consider this scenario:

You have a forum area where members sell items. Although you permit free unlimited editing, you do not really want the first post in the thread edited at a later time to avoid a "he said / she said" situation if there is a dispute. Although in this case the lock would probably have to be automatic I still see the potentiall value of this.

 

[Basenotes]

I think this would be particularly important now in the case of the new article threads

 

[FTL]

I thought that XF already supported this feature, as I've seen it used on other XF forums. It should be implemented post-haste. Upvoted.

 

[Abraham54]

My members cannot delete threads.
The lock option is present, maybe you mean something else?

While the thread is locked - mods and admins can work in it.

 

[VetteRanger]

Here it why it would be useful for our site:
Spammers like to register and make an innocuous looking post, then edit the post later to include advertising or a backlink. Double checking the posts of new users over and over again to see if they pulled this trick is simply not a reasonable option, so if we think a new user may be sketchy but want to give them the benefit of the doubt, this would be a valuable tool.