RexSystem1 voteoriginally by @frenzeldk on GitHub1 reply
I can only support this. It creates transparency while still allowing for a smooth reading experience. Both Facebook (I know, I know) and Discourse support this feature. Not supporting it allows for some nasty surprises, where Mallory writes a message, Bob replies, and Mallory changes their message to make Bobs reply look bad.
One addition could be to allow edits with the first 5 minutes (time frame subject to discussion) where the edit is only visible to instance staff, community owners and/or moderators.
Slightly different to what Frenzeldk - I propose that you can edit at any time, but edits within the first five minutes do not show in edit history
If I accidentally send a secret etc. I can still retract it within 5mins
I can't frame someone later as edits after 5mins show the prior message/s
this is the best overkill solution, if this feature is implemented past the simplest way of doing it. the tooltip for the basic edit time info should be there regardless as well. As for moderation I think it'd be best that the behaviour stay the same, it's not like other platforms collapse for a lack of "moderatable" edit history.
if something is going on in a group where someone is being accused of continually posting weird messages and then disappearing them - which is probably the reason for the barad-dur-moderators arguments - then the solution should just be to have some mod tool have the capability to treat the edits as "offences" and temporarily/permanently disable their ability to edit messages instead of having everyone's potential mistakes auditable or smth
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