munificent 3 days ago

I maintain the formatter for Dart, so a lot of my job involves maintaining the issue tracker for the formatter.

I use this feature all the time. Users get Markdown wrong, give titles to issues that don't make any sense, have typos, etc. Being able to edit issues helps me keep the issue tracker easier to understand and navigate for maintainers and users.

Every feature can be used. That doesn't mean every feature should not exist. The fact that the edit history is still visible means it's next to impossible to abuse the feature. It works fine.

gucci-on-fleek 3 days ago

Markdown is pretty tricky for new users to figure out, so quite often, users will just paste big snippets of code without formatting them, which is nearly unreadable. I'll usually edit these posts to add ```backticks``` around any code.

  • arccy 3 days ago

    or they'll do what i assume is the jira style code blocks with just `multiple lines of code`

halapro 3 days ago

This is particularly useful when editing the top-level comment of a popular issue to specify the current status. Or when a peer opened a placeholder issue and you fill it up. Etc.

If you actually use GitHub as a social network of sorts, there are many reasons to do edit comments. All the edits are visible anyway. You're on Git-Hub, you can already edit everything you have write access to.

  • tomalbrc 3 days ago

    In which world would you want others to be able to edit your posts in a “SOCIAL NETWORK”? In today’s age of misinformation? Greeeeeeeat idea.

    • jabbywocker 3 days ago

      For GitHub specifically? This world. This is a useful feature

projektfu 3 days ago

Censoring insults or illegal speech (depending on jurisdiction) would be the main reason I can think of.

  • merlindru 3 days ago

    That also means that some users will be pressured to censor illegal speech no? If you live under e.g. a regime that disallows or discourages criticism, now suddenly the onus is on you to do something about those comments because you have the ability to. If you couldn't edit the comments it's not your fault.

    Either way I think it's a pretty stupid feature the way it's implemented; it should show the edit more clearly or indicate that the comment has been written by multiple people (like StackOverflow does), especially if edits change more than e.g. 10% of the original comment.

  • matkoniecz 3 days ago

    in such case ability to delete comment would be enough