I recently noticed I can edit the TITLES of other peoples posts???
That is bizarre. I won’t do it (well, I did it once).
Why is that?
What is the reason for letting a user ever edit the Title of another’s thread?
TT
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I think this means you are a regular and so you have a little bit of trust and power to help moderate the community by sometimes changing a title to make it more accurate, perhaps correct a typo, or in the case of a bad actor, stop it being offensive?
Or, as i plan to on what would surely be my last day here, change all the titles randomly with other titles so nothing could be found again! laughs maniacally and goes for a quiet sit down 
The only time I did it was by accident and it was to “correct a typo”.
Until then I never realised you could do that.
But granting that right to every “Regular” seems bizarre to me!
IMO the logic behind editing OTHER PEOPLE’S TITLES is something that needs explaining.
This process is neither transparent nor explained anywhere I can see???
Just probing how this place works!
TT
All the details about “Regular” users can be found at the discourse forum: Understanding Discourse Trust Levels … There is a detailed description, how you become TL3 and how you loose it again, which is possible with Regular status.
Overview in table form can be found at: Trust Level Permissions Table (inc Moderator Roles) - faq - Discourse Meta
Thankyou! You always so good at this kind of thing!
BUT, do you think it correct that a “Regular” can just edit someone else’s Titles??
TT
Okay. But are users HERE aware of those rules?
I wasn’t.
Best, TT
The most common item — that I do often — is to add tags to aid in search and discovery (the title edit button puts the title and tags field into edit mode).
If I split topics, I also have to create a title for the new post — which other regulars can then edit and improve.
This is a community space and we moderate, manage, and improve it together.
If you want to contribute you’re welcome to write a post in meta that becomes the FAQ and guide for this.
You can read the previous thread on this shortly after launch, although it was more focused on body edits than titles.
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I’m pretty sure that nobody with TL-3 will “just” edit someone else’s title, without a reason.
- There are only 9 users which have trust-level 4 or higher.
- There are 12 more users which have TL-3 … which will automatically go away after 2 weeks, if requirements are too low
- TL-2 … 79
- TL-1 … 282
- TL-0 … 300
So what is better? If 9 users have all the work to do or if 21 can support 660 users.
I think it would be fair, if there would be more TL-4’s and 20+ TL-3’s that can help us. …
TL-4 (Leader) can only be granted by “manual” promotion and imo users have to “request” it, because they really need to want that.
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Okay. I really appreciate your clarity and desire to be explicit!
But that one sentence illustrates also, I think, a problem?
What I mean is: Who the hell of normal users understand that in the background
they are classified from TL-0 to TL-4. Or even that TL = Trust Level???
There is a big credibility gap.
I do worry you moderators are confronted with a vastly over-complicated system that causes as many problems as it solves. And will give you headaches!
I had a look at the “Table Of Rights” on Discourse. (Trust Level Permissions Table (inc Moderator Roles) - faq - Discourse Meta)
Man! Why so complicated!
Most of those are entirely irrelevant to TW discussion.
Just for others, here it is … though that it is not all of it, it is too long to capture in a screenshot.
A comment, TT
I want to go back to the OP
Yeah I done it once for @Mohammad 'cause I like to help his English. BUT he would approve it. And I did it by accident. I never knew before I was able to edit titles and set tags for other people’s posts.
Weirdly, what I don’t like is giving permissions to users without explicit public declaration of their rights.
I am very happy with the style of moderation here. Basically because you are sensitive active good guys.
What I don’t like is the messy permissions system which seems administratively way too complex and largely unnecessary.
My two cents 
TT
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Ciao @pmario
Let’s do a thought experiment …
1 - You write a post titled: “Kindergarten in Schlesien.”
2 - I edit it to: “Kindergardens in Silesia.”Am I breaking your right to free speech by editing you?
By the way where is the Discourse server?
Under which country law does it’s content fall?
And what are the rules on ownership of published posts?
I’m NOT wanting to be difficult!
But there seems an awful lot going on in Discourse that is not explicit enough.
Basta, enough negativity from me!
I DO appreciate what you do a lot!
But the Discourse “backroom” seems very messy???
Just an opinion, TT.
This is the problem with hypotheticals. The kind of person who gets to change the titles is also the kind of person who wouldn’t make those kind of arbitrary changes.
In terms of administration … you don’t have to know about the rules unless you want to. The alternative to having lots of rules per user level is having an administratively simple on/off switch. But most people think that fine-grained solutions are better in the long wrong than ham-fisted solutions, even if they take longer to learn.
Also, as has been said on all forums almost since the first one has been created, “This is not a democracy – there is no free speech.”. A forum with free speech would have to allow offensive speech, spammers, trolls, etc. Instead, in the interest of civility, we settle for freeish speech.
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I did set this thread to “Slow Mode”, because I need some time to respond to the 5 questions that have been rased in 3 different posts. … I’ll remove the restriction manually or it will automatically go away “next month”
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Sorry for the wall of text that will follow
Hell isn’t involved… It’s part of the Greetings! message every user gets after signing in.
It’s a private message from the “discobot”, that activates an interactive tutorial, if users choose to interact with it.
- It contains a link to "our friendly staff " that is responsible for this forum
- It contains some info about new abilities users have and how they can get more
- It contains some info about the guidelines here in the forum: civilized community behavior
For me it looked like this:
If the users sets the bookmark as suggested, the tutorial continues. It’s a step by step tutorial, how to work with the forum.
Even if you didn’t finish the tutorial, this message should have answered this question.
You where free to ignore it and you where free to ignore the links. … but … You can’t blame the system it didn’t tell you. It did. … several times.
I think the system uses very sensible defaults and the “promotion” system is completely automatic. If users change status from “New user” to “Basic user” they do get a system notification similar to:
which is a Badge. If users open it, they get this info:
An overview about all badges can be found at: Badges - Talk TW … That’s the same link, that should have been “bookmarked” in the very first notification from the system: “Greetings!”
If you follow the Badges - Talk TW link you’ll find an overview about trust-level and the related badges.
- All of them have a link to Understanding Discourse Trust Levels, which explains them.
- Every badge also shows the number of users that have this status.
- Every badge title is clickable and opens a detailed list of all users shown with their avatar
So imo it’s not true, that the system doesn’t provide this info. It has probably been your choice to completely ignore it.
As I wrote it’s all automatic. Only Regular users, Leaders and Moderators are able to modify thread titles.
As “Understanding Discourse Trust Levels” states:
Trust Level 3 – Regular
Regulars are the backbone of your community, the most active readers and reliable contributors over a period of months, even years. Because they’re always around, they can be further trusted to help tidy up and organize the community.
… [snip]
All of the above criteria must be true to achieve trust level 3. Furthermore, unlike other trust levels, you can lose trust level 3 status. If you dip below these requirements in the last 100 days, you will be demoted back to Member.
IMO to make Talk TiddlyWiki a nice experience it has to be a community effort. I think it’s only fair that the work should shared among many users and not just a view moderators.
As recent events have shown, it is necessary, to have fine grained control.
Why … You fixed the title according to our discussion guidlines say.
Plain English Language
Our discussions are in English. It is not the first language of many people in the community, nor do we all share the same cultural background and reference points. So we take care to use language that is clear and unambiguous, and avoid cultural references or jokes that will not be widely understood.
The Discourse server is hosted by DigitalOcean and the mail-server is run by “mailgun”, which is probably the biggest chunk of server related costs.
Both companies should have a Terms of Service page which you can consult.
IMO it’s part of our Terms Of Service – Your Content section. …
It’s OK to have questions. … My father used to say: “You don’t have to know everything. … You only need to know where to find it.”
have fun!
Mario
I dunno if you are British? But that is very British reasoning.
Which I broadly agree with. Being one.
So long as moderators are “good guys”.
Which I think you are here with quality. So all is fine-ish.
(The quality of support I think matters more than rules about it.)
TT
The granting of rights to “Regulars” automatically is not clear.
Neither on when it happens nor why.
I am not saying it is bad, merely that I doubt any “Regular” is aware of that or it’s rationale.
TT
Right. Except it says …
Content you submit to the forum belongs to you, and you decide what permission to give others for it.
That implies that non-one can edit any person’s content without their permission.
I edited @Mohammad without his explicit permission (guessing he’d be okay with it).
My point is there is a serious grey area in those rights declarations.
TT
I am grateful you took the time and effort to try address my questions.
FWIW, I’ll likely let sleeping dogs lie as, looking back, I look like a minority of one with no others! .
I do think the Discourse is way too complicated in it’s workings.
But I’m content you are hunky-dory with it, since I trust you.
Best, TT
As a person recently “promoted” to Regular (and who will surely lose that status during the academic year when I’ll be less … regular …), I actually did poke around and learn a bit about the trust-level implications. Mostly I chuckled to myself: I’ve never felt so honored to be considered “Regular”!
I’m generally quite wary of editing others’ titles, but I could imagine fixing a very clear typo or adding a disambiguating word in parens. Especially because title accuracy could make a difference to search-results, it serves the whole community well if we tidy up here and there.
It would be ideal if there’s a way for people to be notified of a title-tweak to their own posts, to be able to restore or re-edit without delay. As someone who submits writing to editors, I know that occasionally a well-meaning “fix” causes new problems. When I’m irked about a correction, nine times out of ten I do agree that some fix is called-for, but there’s a reason to avoid the editor’s particular suggestion.
In general, I think of my contributions here as “pay it upward”: If I can halfway-decently answer one of the few questions, or make one of the few tweaks, that I’m competent to do, that frees up time for the more competent folks to address the many questions and logistical details that are over my head.
-Springer
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You are one of the “good guys”! I’d love to be edited by you honey!
How do we know a “Regular” is not an Axe-Murderer?
TT