4 ms·

I think some distinguishing attribute should be displayed to show that a comment was edited by someone other than the user. It's apparent to me that comments ca

I think some distinguishing attribute should be displayed to show that a comment was edited by someone other than the user. It's apparent to me that comments can be edited. How can I be certain that mods haven't silently edited a comment in the past?

dang 5y ago
This is the sort of thing I think would be a mistake. I posted a clear explanation of what I did and why. I believe that's enough to satisfy the community. It does leave a tiny minority unsatisfied who don't trust what we say, but they are not satisfiable. If we added the feature you're suggesting, how could you be certain that we weren't secretly overriding it sometimes? You would either have to take our word for it—in which case why not just believe us in the first place?—or you would need some other system to validate that one. This is how you get systems upon systems, with no actual solution, for a problem that doesn't even really exist. The same issue would recreate itself at every step. Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying "just trust us". Trust is earned. But the way to earn it is to always be open to questions, answer them as well as we can, and when people point out mistakes, to admit them and fix them quickly. That's what we try to do, and it's informal and social. Formal/technical methods are neither necessary nor sufficient for community trust, and it would be a big mistake to think otherwise, because it would steal resources away from other things, like human-to-human communication and making the site itself better.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- diogenesjunior 5y ago
  I suppose you are correct. I do trust you - you have earned that trust, and I don't think you have edited any comments yet.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    More importantly - if you don’t trust him nothing short of pgp signatures or some form of a blockchain would allow you to be certain - as even if there was an obvious edit function it could be bypassed.

dang 5y ago

This is the sort of thing I think would be a mistake. I posted a clear explanation of what I did and why. I believe that's enough to satisfy the community. It does leave a tiny minority unsatisfied who don't trust what we say, but they are not satisfiable. If we added the feature you're suggesting, how could you be certain that we weren't secretly overriding it sometimes? You would either have to take our word for it—in which case why not just believe us in the first place?—or you would need some other system to validate that one. This is how you get systems upon systems, with no actual solution, for a problem that doesn't even really exist. The same issue would recreate itself at every step. Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying "just trust us". Trust is earned. But the way to earn it is to always be open to questions, answer them as well as we can, and when people point out mistakes, to admit them and fix them quickly. That's what we try to do, and it's informal and social. Formal/technical methods are neither necessary nor sufficient for community trust, and it would be a big mistake to think otherwise, because it would steal resources away from other things, like human-to-human communication and making the site itself better.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
diogenesjunior 5y ago
I suppose you are correct. I do trust you - you have earned that trust, and I don't think you have edited any comments yet.
- bombcar 5y ago
  More importantly - if you don’t trust him nothing short of pgp signatures or some form of a blockchain would allow you to be certain - as even if there was an obvious edit function it could be bypassed.