Point of No Return (a.k.a. The Dangers of

[tadman]

It has come as a shock to me on more than one occasion that certain sections of PM behave a little differently from others with respect to the "Preview" mode. You hit submit, a little prematurely perhaps, but think nothing of it, until you can't find a way to edit your posting short of pestering a Saint.

If you are replying to a message, for instance, pressing "Submit" isn't really all that dangerous because you can always edit your posting later. However, if you submit something to a section directly, there is no going back unless you get some help from the editors.

It would be handy to include some sort of note below the buttons that indicate if this is a "Submit, but don't worry you can change it later" button, or a "Submit, and you better be darned sure about it" button.

This node, for example, cannot be edited by me directly.

Of course, if you know a bit about Everything you can always kick it into "Edit" mode for your node, but this seems a bit crazy.

[mirod]

What about using the preview and checking carefully your posts before submitting them?

When you post something erroneous someone will read it, and even if you update the node and fix it later, there is a good chance that some (most?) of your readers will never see the update. So try to respect them a little more and take your time before you answer, especially when you start a thread, as it is one of the most important thing you can do on PM (and as you should not be under the "first-answer gets more XP's" syndrom ;--).

[mikfire]

This has been discussed before at least once. I seem to remember ( though cannot find ) the basic reason given was that we ( meaning the Monastery, not the secret cabal ) did not want somebody to get the root node approved and then modify it after the fact. This, it was thought, could lead to confusion and abuse.

I do like the idea of being able to modify it until it is approved though, as mentioned in the linked node above. I wonder if Fearless Leader could implement that.

mikfire