In the past four years we've allowed many things for the users, I've seen a lot happen. I think I've been here long enough to know how the average users are. You look at the issue from your own perspective, I look at the whole community.
You're 100% right there, I surely don't know the forum as much as you do since I discovered TPU only a year ago last May.
However, even though it might not appear, I did not make this suggestion from my own perspective but honestly I tried to look at the whole community and with the aim of making TPU a better place.
A hand full of people might bother, which simply isn't worth the abuse. Anything that can be changed will be abused. Look at the latest tag addition for example. Every single person here is a great comedian, yet I hardly ever laugh.
This is where I don't agree. I can't understand where this potential system of enabling the OP to change the title of his thread can be abused?
Okay some of the members stretched the argument into even allowing any member to close and re-open at whim the thread they started. That had never been my point and I don't agree with it at all. If someone makes a thread and people want to post then everyone should be free to post, and a normal member shouldn't be able to decide where and what other normal members post. That's a moderator's job and that really can cause abuse - imagine the scenario where someone asks for suggestions to buy parts, and because he doesn't like the replies/brands suggested he just bluntly closes the thread!:shadedshu
Also to make it clear, what I intended was that ONLY the OP would have the facility of changing the thread title.
After all, all members can edit their posts any time. No other normal member can edit another normal member's post, and the same should apply to the titles of the same post.
Let's just list the advantages and disadvantages of this suggestion, including the most trivial and the most important (summed up from what everyone posted so far):
The Advantages:
1) The editing of mistakes in the title. These can be spelling mistakes (like the better/butter one) or other types of mistakes like those of omission or because the OP doesn't natively speak English or isn't well conversed on the topic like the rest of the members and he realises he didn't formulate the title correctly/professionally.
Like the scenario where one askes for advice on the 8800GTS and after pressing the 'submit' button he realises that he omitted to say whether it's the G80 or G92 version. Or he's a newbie who realises that there had been 2 versions of that card only after reading the first couple of replies to his post because he just didn't know before. Or someone who was sure he had an E4300 only to realise after logging in to the other computer that it was an E4400...
2) The impression this forum gives to a newbie who comes here off google.
This complements the first reason above. Many people come here because they have a hardware/software problem, use google and this site comes up amongst the search. The first thing he sees is the title of the threads....
3) Sometimes even after careful thinking about how to formulate the title, the way the thread progresses makes it that ironically the title would be the only part of the thread which is "off topic" so to speak.
I bring this example - someone buys a new monitor, plugs it in, and the picture is mucked up. He makes a post about the monitor, the brand, its settings, going into details on ms, contrast ratio etc etc... A couple of posts later it surfaces that coincidentally the problem had been because the oc of his graphics card wasn't keeping up with the demands of the large monitor just purchased. What happens in such threads? Some members unfortunately just read the title, and give it a miss because they don't know much about monitors to give advice. They wouldn't know that the content inside the thread would have been discussion on the OP's graphic card. Or even worse, some people might read the title, and confident that they know the solution through personal experience might post advice on monitor settings/drivers etc without even realising that the problem had been the GPU all the way.
4) The Buy/Sell/Trade/Giveaway Forum.
In this case the OP can easily add to the title "SOLD" or "BOUGHT".
It will easily reduce confusion of having people asking about it, or having to read the whole thread to see what happened (which usually isn't done). Also it's a great benefit for members who have some
hard-to-sell or hard-to-find item which has been in that forum for a couple of months because automatically people might think that since it's an "old" thread they just overlook it without bothering to post or pm the OP. And speaking of pm's it's very common that members don't know what happens in this particular forum since commonly transactions are finally carried out in private via pm.
Sure some OP's here might 'forget' to mark their thread appropriately, but this can hardly be classified as abuse since upon receiving such query they'd remember to amend the title so as not to be inundated by further queries for an item no longer available!
4) The moderators save some work.
I'm sure all of us respect their work, I have an inkling because I mod another (totally different genre of) forum. That's the reason why personally I don't send title change requests to our mods here because it can be quite a handful to deal with...
And to our mods, please don't expect us to be perfect. No one is perfect and it doesn't mean that if someone formulated a bad/misspelt title it automatically implies carelessness. We have members all over the world, ultimately all people interested in computers have the potential of finding their haven here. This includes people with
ADHD who are impulsive and can't help it, and who might realise their mistakes later; people who are
dyslexic but who otherwise are very knowlegeable... yet others who might not even be using their hands to control mouse and keyboard....
And to give a very trivial example on myself without pointing any fingers, lately I changed my mouse - I have to be extremely careful because I haven't got accustomed yet so as soon as I relax my hand on the thing I get the buttons pressed. That spells disaster if in the midst of a post I happen to have the pointer on the 'submit' button.
5) Last but not least, trying this out isn't something irreversible which once done is done. A trial could be done - for a week, for a month, whatever.
The disadvantages:
Sorry but I couldn't find any...
However looking at the trend of this thread, abuse was mentioned.
Also, the disadvantages of the 'thread tags' were mentioned for the precise reason because they were abused. However the tags were allowed to be placed anonymously, by any member, to any thread... Even the most mature member might get the temptation to play the 'invisible naughty guy'.
But here we're speaking, let's mention me Black Panther: I create a thread - I want to change the title - who can change it? - only me... So whatever happens to the title of the thread? - it's just like as if it had been my original title - it still has my name attached to it if I do something silly or abusive - who did it? - The answer would be myself and no one else. Do you think I'd ever even have the temptation to play silly in that way? You bet not!
If someone registers here to troll and spam/abuse he is certainly not waiting for the option to amend the title of his threads to be created, he will spam nonetheless so that's out of the argument.
The rest of us, who have friends here and a reputation, who like to help and be helped in return, might find it a temptation to add a silly/funny tag anonymously to some thread maybe just for a quick joke.... but does anyone of you fathom any way how you can 'abuse' by changing a title of a thread which you yourself created and which everyone knows that only you have the power to change the title of?
Anything that can be changed will be abused.
That's a correct statement, but its correctness doesn't justify the refusal for change. Maybe far-fetched but if no change ever happened for fear of abuse we'd still be neanderthals living in caves....
You know that anyone can edit their post - right now I can go and edit my 861 posts to display a direct link perhaps to some totally offensive or prohibited site or picture... and so can the rest of the 27,000+ members of TPU. But tell me how many members have abused their power to edit their posts so far???
Thank you for reading so far, those of you who made it!
Apologies for dehydration caused due to watering eyes...
Here's my conclusion:
I don't want to appear as if I'm forcing the issue. This is something only for W1zzard and our moderators to decide because they pay for this site and work hard for its optimal performance, undoubtedly because this is one of the most flawless forums I've ever been in.
But this was the reason why I didn't make it a poll in the first place because it wasn't my intention to put any pressure on the decision. It was not my insistence that a poll was created, though I am glad it was done since it better reflects the opinions here. For a similar reason I did not give any thanks to anyone's opinion.
However my persistence lies in that I am 100% convinced that were this to be implemented it would be a good decision for the good of all the members, the moderators and for the same optimal performance of TPU in general.
Had not been so confident about the above I wouldn't have placed this as a suggestion here for certain.
