MottiKhan

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Additional info - The Edit button appears on both of my replies above.  I think it used to only show up on the last post.

I tried both Edit buttons with the same result.

Haha, and naturally I have an edit button on my last post to this thread.

Same config.

Did not clear cache, cookies, log out or anything; in short, nothing changed on my end.

Testing - Cleared cache, cookies and flushed dns.

There is a time limit on how long you have to edit replies. That limit is 10 minutes. After that period of time, if you attempt to edit a reply, you're redirected back to that reply.

Before I put the update up this afternoon, I tested with every single access class of user that we have. All of them were able to edit successfully. When I get back to the office on Monday I'll use one or more of your accounts and see if there is some circumstance tied to your account(s) that is making the site think you're not allowed to edit.

Please don't make 'me too' replies on this post, or speculate on what the trouble might be. At this point I'm convinced that it's server side (which means it's on me to fix).

Thanks

pictoratus, as I stated in the reply before yours, I will be looking into the matter come Monday when I return to the office.

Just FYI, having the 'last reply' in a post no longer determines the Edit button appearing or not appearing. It is not strictly confined to the amount of time which has passed since the reply was made.

There is some reasoning behind it, yes. The final call on the exact amount of time came from the department head though. I'll do my best to explain the basis for the policy;

Our forum system has evolved over time from a very, very basic setup. This setup had little moderation tracking and therefore very little accountability. We've been striving to bring it up to a modern standard in line with such forum systems as vBulliten and Invision Power Board. We're getting there, but still have a long way to to go.

Since we're still not quite there with moderation/editing tracking, we have to have a means to keep users accountable for what they say. Basically, if a user comes along and replies with a really mean nasty comment, to which 20 people reply to, and that user changes (edits) his mean nasty comment to be lovely and friendly, then the 20 replies beneath it are then skewed and the user has effectively gotten away with being mean and nasty with no accountability.

Moving ahead, what I would personally like to see is the ability for users to always be able to edit their replies. This would require better tracking and better tools for moderators and admins to see what was changed and by who. This particular feature happens to be high on my todo list for the forums.

So that's the bare bones reasoning behind it. It's a pain, I know. But it's a temporary (read: hopefully) stopgap at the moment to allow people to edit, but also enforce some amount of accountability.

*** If anyone would like to continue to discuss the issue of the time limit on editing replies, please start a new post and I will be happy to participate in that disucssion. Please don't reply in this post, on the issue of the reply editing time limit ***

Here's the exact logic that the page should (and apparently is not) be using:

• The edit button will be visible if [your] reply has been made within the last 10 minutes.
• If you attempt to go to the edit url for a reply and the reply was made more than 10 minutes ago, you are redirected.
• If you open the reply page within the ten minute time period and spend time enough on the edit reply page, to run over the 10 minute limit, the edit of the reply is not allowed (this one really stinks, but we had to do it because it would have been too easy to exploit)

I will be investigating why this is not consistent.

I have been having this same issue in IE7 and Firefox3 on 2 different systems, 2 different sets of Firefox plugins. Some posts it will let me edit and some will not.... very strange. Always within 10 minutes.

Hey guys, when we've acknowledged the problem and stated that we're looking into it and going to fix it, please hold off on the 'me too' replies. We know it's broken already And while we appreciate that you're probably just trying to lend support to the fact that it's busted, it doesn't help us out at all.

Mumblefratz, thanks for confirming that the edit function is working on other websites. Unfortunately the only relation those other websites have to the forums is the database they access, and the database is not the culprit here.