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Ask HN: Why people on HN disclaim “EDIT: ” even for the smallest edits?

26 points by rmbyrro ↗ HN
My impression is sometimes we could just edit typos and small stuff, without the need to make a disclosure at the bottom.

Some would even keep the original text intact and state corrections at the bottom, which renders a worse reading experience, in my opinion.

Sometimes I edit so fast after I published that I doubt anyone has read it before I edit.

So, should I really make an "EDIT" disclaimer all the time here on HN?

56 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] thread
uberman
IMHO, No.

The only time I would do a disclaimer like that is if an edit made a substantive change to the meaning of the post. For example, if I included a quote from a source that was subsequently shown to be out of context.

tamaharbor
Or if there are responses which would no longer make sense.
mannykannot
In that situation, the better policy, usually, is to make one's change or clarification as a reply to said response.
toast0
It depends on the response. If it's an agreed error, it makes sense to fix it in the post, acknowledge the edit, and the reply may be deleted, condensing the thread.
PaulHoule
Personally I edit so much that I might as well write EDIT the first time. No matter how often I get accused of it, I never do it to make people who reply look stupid. I see that kind of complaining as right up there with people who are indignant that comments can get down voted.
mindcrime
So, should I really make an "EDIT" disclaimer all the time here on HN?

IMHO, no.

Personally, I only add an EDIT disclaimer if I'm substantially altering the original post. For me that usually means adding additional explanation / context / citations / etc. below the original content. I'd say I rarely change a post in a way that radically alters the meaning of something I already said. But if I do, I'll add an EDIT marker.

I definitely don't bother with that for fixing typos, simple grammatical errors, punctuation, etc.

corobo
Force of habit to be honest

I used to do it wayyyy more, but now try to restrain to important edit notes like "turns out I'm wrong as the reply mentions, don't believe this comment, leaving original below for posterity"

Don't forget if people don't add edits, you wont know. I think on average I edit a comment 5-10 times to get the wording right, my first drafts are usually far worse than the guff I actually leave up :)

Pro tip to edit types: HN lets you delay your post becoming visible, get all your edits in before it goes live. It's controlled by the 'delay' option in your profile and is measured in minutes

lanstin
I should turn that on. I think north of 90% of all my posts since Covid started have typos. Not sure how that global thing has made my typing so bad or inattentive but it seems to be at correlated.
brimble
I've gotten much worse about that over the years. I used to almost never have typos or grammatical errors in my writing, starting... I dunno, at age 10? Really young, anyway. If I made a mistake I'd catch it instantly and fix it without missing a beat. Some time in my 30s I started to get worse. My main problem seems to be simply skipping entire words, but I'm also far worse at catching word or phrase re-use without a separate edit pass.
eganist
> So, should I really make an "EDIT" disclaimer all the time here on HN?

no

edit: yes if it's significant.

lifthrasiir
Also yes if the edit may affect following replies. But I guess that also counts as a significant edit.
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Symbiote
Many people presumably don't add "EDIT" for the smallest edits -- but then there's nothing to see.
paulcole
> Why people on HN disclaim “EDIT: ” even for the smallest edits?

People vastly overestimate how much other people care about what they have to say.

0des
This is the answer, close the thread.
jacquesm
No. Except for the case when you already have a comment answering yours and the edit you are making invalidates some of the comment to yours.
outsidetheparty
That's where I draw the line: if someone has responded, I should stick by what I wrote and address any "edits" as a followup comment. If there are no responses then I feel like it's fair game.

Correcting simple typos and misspellings is also always fine.

iow Do No Harm

jacquesm
Yep, the interesting part though is that HN is async and sometimes comments roll in while you are editing, so if an edit really is substantial then it is a good idea to flag it as such.
joezydeco
It's a habit carried over from Reddit users.

Comments edited after they've been read get flagged, and people tend to explain the flag to remove suspicion of nefarious backediting.

cinntaile
It doesn't have anything to do with Reddit. It's about being honest and avoiding possible future confusion.
Cthulhu_
> It's a habit carried over from Reddit users.

It's a habit that goes back decades on e.g. web forums and editable comment sections; some forum software automatically marks a post as edited, sometimes adds a percentage how much was changed, and leaves an edit log for moderators. They add form fields so people can indicate what they edited, or add a grace period (setting) that avoids adding the 'edited' marker if edited within a set amount of time after posting (for e.g. typos).

TL;DR it goes back a lot farther.

joezydeco
Sure, but OP asked why the 'EDIT:' string on posts. In my 40+ years of online forum use I've only recently seen this habit on Reddit. I'm sure it exists elsewhere but this was my POV.
cinntaile
Most forums automatically add the edit string and the time of change and they usually provide a possibility to add an explanation. Here this doesn't happen so people add it manually. E.g. I have never had an account on Reddit, I do not visit it and I add it when it makes sense.
0des
It most certainly does not.
dragonwriter
> It's a habit carried over from Reddit users.

It's common (the use of “EDIT” to flag edits generally, not necessarily the practice of doing it for trivial edits), IME, in most discussion fora where comments are editable, and has been longer than Reddit has existed.

hadlock
It goes back to bbcode forums, in particular Something Awful, which is ~circa 1999 (1998?). Your post would have an "edited by [user] at [N time]" which only shows up if the edit happened after the next post, or Y time had elapsed. If you made an inflammatory statement, and got dragged for it, you could try and edit the original post, and it would show that you changed your position later, and people would drag you even harder. A lot of people will quote you if you make an inflammatory comment so that you can't change the past. Their quote won't have an edit tag and yours will, after their post, which further points to you backtracking on your original statement. HN doesn't really use quotes to any great degree, neither does reddit.

Reddit came into being ~2008-9 so this practice of EDIT: blah goes back at least a decade before then.

Markoff
yup, the reason why I number my edits EDIT, EDIT 2, EDIT 3 if there are multiple edits, so they match the number of edits in BB code forums, although nowadays you can't see the number of edits on Reddit AFAIK

though maybe it was already possible to edit FifoNet posts? not sure

quanticle
So, should I really make an "EDIT" disclaimer all the time here on HN?

Yes, you should. It's a matter of maintaining intellectual honesty. If there's any chance of your post having diverged from the post that someone is replying to, even if the divergence is as small as a single-letter spelling error, you should call that out.

Sometimes I edit so fast after I published that I doubt anyone has read it before I edit.

Why don't you write your posts out in a text editor? That way you don't have to constantly edit and revise in a browser text box.

lifthrasiir
> Why don't you write your posts out in a text editor? That way you don't have to constantly edit and revise in a browser text box.

Unfortunately some mistakes or better ways to word your expression are visible only after posting. (Yes, I edited this reply at least 3 times. I don't believe my edits changed my intention though.)

Rastonbury
The obvious answers is its easier to post directly and add the edit if you make a mistake just in case.
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joshstrange
I see adding "EDIT" as a nice way to show what was changed, even if it was just a typo (though if I'm fast enough at catching a typo I won't always add "EDIT"). It helps people that already read your comment so they can see what changed and prevents confusion. For example if someone edits in a link to what they were talking about or adds context I really appreciate the "EDIT" because without it I might skim over their comment without noticing the change if I've already read it pre-edit. People who make big changes to their comments without mentioning what was changed are being somewhat disingenuous in my opinion. Especially if they change their viewpoint significantly without calling it out. It's a bit of an asshole-move especially if people have already replied to your original comment.

> My impression is sometimes we could just edit typos and small stuff, without the need to make a disclosure at the bottom.

Yes, I would generally agree with this.

> Some would even keep the original text intact and state corrections at the bottom, which renders a worse reading experience, in my opinion.

This is a grey area for me. It's somewhat hard with HN's formatting to transparently and clearly fix the original text sometimes. Example: "I do agree" -> "I do not agree", do you put "I do (EDIT: not) agree", "I do not agree (EDIT: previously typo'd that I do agree)", "I do agree \n\n EDIT: I actually do /not/ agree, that was a typo", etc. I think people that leave the original text and then add a disclaimer/correction at the bottom are attempting to be open and transparent and I respect that. There used to be an HN plugin years ago that did edit diffs on comments (displayed them kind of like git diffs) and I do kind of wish HN would show edit history. I've been burned by replying to a comment that gets edited out from under me such that by the time I comment they are no longer making the point I'm rebutting or they've softened/changed their argument. Because of this I often will quote what I'm replying to in these cases to protect against the author changing their comment and making mine look odd/out-of-place.

> Sometimes I edit so fast after I published that I doubt anyone has read it before I edit.

I think this is fine, as long as you aren't changing the spirt of the comment. Typos, link adding (if fast enough), and similar are fine to do without calling out the edit.

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js2
Folks may not be aware of HN’s delay feature:

> In my profile, what is delay?

> It gives you time to edit your comments before they appear to others. Set it to the number of minutes you'd like. The maximum is 10.

Markoff
this is disabled by default AFAIK and you can still edit your comments anyway, so not exactly sure how is this feature behaving
orwin
I think it's a habit i got from ol' phpBB forums. I did the same with reddit. Should you? No, i think its personnal preference. I won't downvote if there is no edit disclaimer, i don't think anyone would.
0des
pointless pageantry to make us feel as if we arent all procrastinating some type of work. We can't ALL be waiting on a build to finish.
zorak8me
If sometime in your thread identifies the typo/minor issue and you edit, then it is common courtesy to call out the edit.
nicolas_t
I will only add it if the edit changes my comment substantially. For example if I was wrong on something, or if I figured out my question or if a typo I made changes the meaning of my comment completely.
detaro
I totally get erring on the side of caution, but IMHO no. The main problem with stealth edits is if they make replies look out of context, but that's not a problem for many edits (and can always be acknowledged if it happens so it's clear what happened). But I also don't mind people doing it, if they are more comfortable with their writing that way that's their decision.
omgmajk
I don't add "edit: " to unimportant things. If I give a statement and later I change my statement, I will. Otherwise, no.
omarhaneef
Sample bias: you only see the tiny minority that edits for the smallest reasons and not the majority that might even let major changes go unmarked.

Edit: I am in the former camp

dragonwriter
> Why people on HN disclaim “EDIT: ” even for the smallest edits?

Mostly, I’m sure, they don't.

But you only notice the people that do.

lkxijlewlf
If I edit punctuation or spelling, I don't usually add a disclaimer. If I add or remove whole words or sentences, I add a disclaimer.
mettamage
I edit all the time and I almost never make an edit disclaimer. I don't feel any need to disclaim that I'm editing something, I'm not a professional broadcasting service or anything. I'm simply a person writing stuff. I can write whatever I want and how I want it. Everything I write is well intended (IMO), editing is servicing to communicate whatever I want to say better. If whatever I write is too out of line, I'll see it in the amount of down votes.

And yes, that editing includes this comment. I've edited it as well (9 times now, I think, could you imagine me writing 4 to 5 edit disclaimers every comment? I know I can't). What I simply can't stand is a blinking cursor and then needing to read my text. I like to read my text in the presentation as others see it, which is why I edit so much. It's a quirk I have, I don't see any issues with it. And even if others see issues with it, I don't think I'm going to change the way I write comments.

After an hour you can't edit anyway, so I always view comments over an hour ago as "canon".

With that said, sometimes it can be useful to indicate that you've edited. This is especially the case when someone quotes you and you've deleted that text, stuff like that.