Talk:Flow Portal/Editing comments

Argument
So the page says: "Using the current talkpage interface, it is possible for users to edit the posts of others, up to and including interleaving. From a user experience point of view, this is irrational (and, frankly, insane): a discussion medium does not work without the certainty that the comment you are replying to is genuine, and that your comment will not itself be tweaked or corrupted by others. Accordingly, the argument is for Flow to not permit modification of posts, with the exception of a user trying to modify their own contribution."

I'm not sure if I understand this argument. There's two things I find strange about it. The first point is that it doesn't matter who changes the comment after the fact, this still affects the genuineness of the comment. In my experience, it is not a third-party changing a comment that undermines the genuineness most commonly, but rather the original editor changing a comment in substantive ways is more common. Example: Editor A posts one thing, Editor B responds with an elenchus, and Editor A goes back and changes her original comment so that B's response no longer makes sense. If the undermining of genuineness is a good enough reason for removing the ability of editors to change others' comments, so too it is a good enough reason for removing the ability of editors to change their own comments.

Second (and this is far more minor): There already is a way to have (relative) certainty that a comment is genuine: Check the diffs. The argument needs the further premise that checking diffs is too burdensome for a well-functioning comment system.

When you combine these two considerations: If the goal of not allowing other editors to change one's comments is to avoid the need of constantly checking diffs, then the goal is simply not met. The fact that the original editors can still change their comments keeps this as a requirement, as this is significant enough such that there will still be a need to check diffs. --Atethnekos (talk) 19:47, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
 * If an initial post is altered, I believe there will be something like an "Edited by x" note attached (just as Liquidthreads currently has, eg Thread:Talk:Flow/Auto-archiving/reply (30)).
 * The discussion at this point is to determine in what circumstances, and how frequently, we edit each others posts. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:58, 1 October 2013 (UTC)