Requested feature overview description.
Instead of having a limited time frame to be able to edit a comment in, why not make it so staff (and staff only) can see what the comment was, before and after it was edited and can delete it from their database if they feel that the edit isn't simply someone trying to get out of trouble.

Why would it be useful?
It would prevent people who made a mistake or forgot to put something in their original comment from having to post another comment just to add to the original one.

Plus, in the scenario where a troublemaker abuses someone and then edits their comment to push it underneath the rug and cover their ass from admin actions, staff can still see what the comment was before it was edited

What part(s) of the site page(s) are affected?
Comments on Posts

+1

I suggest increasing the time limit to 1 hour for what was posted, and resetting the time limit after editing.

I can think of a couple instances where edit history would have spared people from gaslighting.

However, I think the 5 minute time limit should remain unchanged.

+1/2

Knotty_Curls said:
I can think of a couple instances where edit history would have spared people from gaslighting.

However, I think the 5 minute time limit should remain unchanged.

+1/2

What if you could edit after the limit expires, but you can't remove what is already there and everything added is prefaced with "EDIT:"?

kamimatsu said:
What if you could edit after the limit expires, but you can't remove what is already there and everything added is prefaced with "EDIT:"?

Eh. I would be +1 if instead of EDIT, it was a pencil icon or something like that. I think EDIT: could disrupt readability a lot when you make an edit in the middle of a paragraph, and could become pretty terrible with multiple corrections.

However I have to point out this is inadequately specified.
For example, suppose you edit a paragraph to strike it through. This will add an edit marker to the end of the paragraph as well as the start, which is AFAICS quite useless.

Editing to add missing spaces is another pathological case that IMO would need to be filtered out.

savageorange said:
Eh. I would be +1 if instead of EDIT, it was a pencil icon or something like that. I think EDIT: could disrupt readability a lot when you make an edit in the middle of a paragraph, and could become pretty terrible with multiple corrections.

However I have to point out this is inadequately specified.
For example, suppose you edit a paragraph to strike it through. This will add an edit marker to the end of the paragraph as well as the start, which is AFAICS quite useless.

Editing to add missing spaces is another pathological case that IMO would need to be filtered out.

I mean only doing that thing if the hour expires. If it doesn't, change and remove to your heart's content.

+1 to raise it by a few minutes and lock it if it is reported, or add a edit history.
-1 to remove it entirely.

Allowing users to edit their comments Willy nilly after various periods of time without tracking can lead to complicated situation.
Such as a user editing a month old comment to say something against the rules, causing a admin to go "oh, it is a month old".
As well as users editing out the contents of their comment if it is reported.

Chaser said:
+1 to raise it by a few minutes and lock it if it is reported, or add a edit history.
-1 to remove it entirely.

Allowing users to edit their comments Willy nilly after various periods of time without tracking can lead to complicated situation.
Such as a user editing a month old comment to say something against the rules, causing a admin to go "oh, it is a month old".
As well as users editing out the contents of their comment if it is reported.

one thing could be, in addittion to not allowing anything after the limit passes to be removed, if an edit is made, adding on to the timestamp of a comment to have something like "posted x ago, last edited y ago". it would basically just be adding one more property to a comment. if it wasn't edited, the property would be empty. if it was edited, it would be the last time. then anything reported could, if it was edited, look at that date instead of when it was posted.
if a comment is reported, the admin looking could be shown that specific version, then any later versions after the report. this would prevent people from doing an orwellian retcon of a comment that breaks a rule, but also let them edit in something for clarification if it's something like a post that could be interpreted differently than the intended meaning, and they could clarify what it meant. If they use that to change it completely, the admin would know the user tried to hide it. If they use it to add clarification to avoid unintentionally sending the wrong message, it could prevent penalties given to someone who may not have done anything wrong. If the edit for clarification is an obvious lie, then the admins will know because, let's be real, they're smart enough to know when a user is trying to save face with a lie.

Because of course the admins don't have enough to do as it is.

Yeah, that's the biggest hole in any of these proposals. I think the least ongoing-admin-work-intensive proposal would be a slight modification of Chaser's:

raise it by a few minutes and lock it if it is reported, AND add a edit history.

Reason being that, given that a comment has been reported, edit history will make it most rapidly obvious what is going on. In combination with locking if it is reported, so that the 'frozen' state of the comment is very likely to be the same state the reporter is complaining about, rather than a modification.

If you were going with this idea, I think it could further be streamlined by making the system automatically present a summary of the comment revision history within the report. However I don't know whether the database schema for reports would accommodate this well.

kamimatsu said:
What if you could edit after the limit expires, but you can't remove what is already there and everything added is prefaced with "EDIT:"?

i already do that manually whenever i make a major edit to one of my posts (stuff bigger than fixing a typo for example). though i do usually separate the edit like

this.

Chaser said:
+1 to raise it by a few minutes and lock it if it is reported, or add a edit history.
-1 to remove it entirely.

Allowing users to edit their comments Willy nilly after various periods of time without tracking can lead to complicated situation.
Such as a user editing a month old comment to say something against the rules, causing a admin to go "oh, it is a month old".
As well as users editing out the contents of their comment if it is reported.

hmmm... if possible, would locking the edit function for a comment work when it has been reported? then let the staff handling the ticket decide whether or not to unlock it once said ticket has been taken care of? it'd be an extra step when it comes to ticket related stuff but it might work.

that might help with your -1 point.

Maybe a ticket could just directly contain a full copy of the comment, that way the history is preserved without any large modifications to comments itself.

NotMeNotYou said:
Maybe a ticket could just directly contain a full copy of the comment, that way the history is preserved without any large modifications to comments itself.

I feel the auto-quote portion should be hidden from the Public tickets system for Priviledged-. It's probably nothing actually needed (People shouldn't be launching attacks anyways), but that doesn't change me feeling it should be hidden.