Good will prevail...

Thank you, Alan, for trying to find a solution that most of us can support. What concerns me is that I often use the site search (mainly via Google) to find information
on a radio or topic that has been discussed here in the past. If nothing else, that helps keep me from asking a question that has already been well addressed. Those
threads are often from several years ago. Understandably, many links to photos are broken, but the text remains, and is usually very helpful.

Perhaps instead of disabling edits after 10 minutes, a few hours, whatever, posts could be locked for archival purposes after a longer period, say six months or a year.

I think I only edit my posts if I see a missing word or an embarrassing typo/misspelling. I catch those pretty quickly after hitting submit, and it's nice to have that option.
I'm not against disabling edits and wholesale deletions after some period of time, for the archival reasons mentioned above.

Thanks, everybody.

Dale

I think the biggest impact will be with photos. Photobucket is a mess (overlaying an illegal watermark and defocusing of the image) and now Tinypic has disappeared leaving just garbage in a thread. I know when Photobucket first issued their ransom demand and I moved all my images it took many days of editing links to fix the posts. I'm not sure being unable to do that isn't a bigger problem than the one or two malcontents deleting their posts.

Larry

Thanks for keeping unrestricted editing.

I often look back through my old posts and discover broken links to key info or esp images of mine.
My webhost changed their server software NOW causing case-sensitive file names to be different than I may have typed them in my original posts.
So I have to often go back to old posts and seek broken links to images and correct the filenames.
Without unrestricted editing this would not be possible.

Odd. Where are posts with *** replacing text? I do not remember seeing one. It would be annoying.

I must not be the only person who sometimes only sees typographical errors, or errors made by the cell phone automatic software, when later viewing the post on a computer screen.

Sometimes, we learn a model number or name or other data months, even years after a post is made. How would we contact someone to make the change?

Check the links Greg provided above, especially the one mentioning being "a busy beaver"... Apparently the post(s) contained discussion and nice photos about the restoration of a fairly high-end unit. The responses were very favorable, but now we'll never know what they were about.

--Bob

Are there any backups or archives that could be used to restore the trashed threads. After restoring, they could then be locked.

Everything currently exists as backups are made automatically. However there is no automated way to filter out just the edited posts in one database image and copy over those selected fields in the other database image. There are hundreds, if not thousands of other changes that have occurred since the older copy. If I restore to an earlier date, then everything posted since then would be gone.

I happen to be good friends with Jon Ketron. He is truly being unfairly judged by people who do not know him. He truly is a good man who has no ill torward the forum or its members. He simply chose to move on from the forum. He has made a lot of friends and is grateful for his time as a member.

He is talented technician and am proud to call him a friend.

By vandalizing it. Deliberately, and spending hours doing so.

There are about 1960 posts missing from about 100 threads on high end radios. They contained hundreds of good photos of restoration details plus the commentary of someone extremely good at their work I think it is a significant loss and that a repeat of it needs to be prevented.

Whether the poster understands it or not, he joined a community. What he contributed belongs to the community. The removal of his donation damaged and devalued the property of the community. It's called vandalism.

The photobucket et al problem is a lesson in not depending on outside resources for the proper operation of the board. Everything about the internet is volatile and minimizing exposure to outside decisions over which you have no control is prudent. It has been over 2 years since photobucket held images for ransom. It's nice that some are still cleaning up the debris, but after 2 years, how much of that activity will continue?

I am not an expert in phpBB, but I have been using relational databases and user groups since the 1970s. In phpBB you can create groups that have limited specific rights and place any member that needs those permissions in the group temporarily. Allowing them to edit their own posts in a forum is as fine as phpBB allows, I think. It would be nice if it is possible to limit activity to a single thread, but I don't know if this ability exists. This creates a temporary hole in security for the period allowed for the scope allowed, but this is better than no security at all.

Restoring the missing posts is not a phpBB problem. It uses a database, usually mysql, but it could be any one of a dozen others. The mechanics of restoring depend on the nature of the backup. If it is an image of the database, it is as simple as a "Insert...Select" of the vandalized posts, which should be easy to identify. If the backup is embedded in a backup utility arrangement, the database just needs to be restored to a separate place than the board and the copy done from there. Once you have both tables, from within the backup table:

INSERT INTO board_database.posts_table
SELECT * FROM backup_table WHERE poster = "xxx";

What are in lower case are names that are assigned in your system. I have no way to know what they are. The person who maintains your system should know all of them. There may also be an administrator tool in phpBB that allows you to do the same without worrying about the syntax.

John

He has an odd way of showing gratitude to ARF and its members.

Bob

How about asking him why he deleted his posts?

I'm with Dave on this!
It is indeed unfortunate..... but assure everyone he meant no ill will. None whatsoever.

He simply wanted to remove his presence from the forum, not realizing the damage he he was causing.
Please don't judge him harshly, he is a great guy and a good friend of mine as well.

-Steve

Jon must have been mighty upset about something to decide to take his ball and go home like that.

Perhaps this too is an issue that needs to be addressed.

I am pleased that post editing is returned to the old policy.
IMO this is the much lessor of two evils and benefits far more people than locking down editing.

I feel the actions of Photobucket did much more to "vandalize" forums than any individual could EVER do.....

-Steve

True, but that's a situation beyond our control. I've been on other boards over the years as I'm sure many or most here have, and usually when someone gets so bent out of shape that they go to the trouble of deleting all their posts, it's emotionally caused. That's why I asked Dave S to ask his pal what the reason was for the deletions.

There are always two sides to a story.

DM

This is true, but myself and others fail to find any posts that could have caused this. Maybe someday we will find out what set him off on a 10 day deleting spree. Often typewritten words are misconstrued. Anyway, I hope he is well and wish him luck in his future restorations.