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I'm half a moron.

I need to be able to edit sent Moderator Private Messages because I cannot stop pressing the send button before proofreading my messages.

Please, think of the morons.

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10
  • 1
    I want to upvote that message, despite the typo.
    – Bill the Lizard
    Sep 1, 2011 at 14:28
  • 2
    Are you sure you want to send? Are you really sure? REALLY? REALLLLLLYYYYY?
    – tombull89
    Sep 1, 2011 at 14:36
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    I am half a kitten. PLZ THINK OF TEH KITTUNZ KTHXBAI.
    – Piskvor left the building
    Sep 1, 2011 at 15:04
  • 3
    Don't worry, many people that receive them have difficulty reading anyway. That's .. well .. why they receive them. I did write a proposal to allow for drafts which lets other mods glance over a message before it is sent.
    – Tim Post
    Sep 1, 2011 at 15:19
  • @TimPost: You mean like, "So, was any action taken?" Did you read the damned message???
    – user1228
    Sep 1, 2011 at 15:25
  • 6
    You'll get those 15 minutes of your life back after the next re-calc, no worries.
    – Tim Post
    Sep 1, 2011 at 15:28
  • 2
    half a moron? Give yourself a little more credit, Will. You're at least three-quarters moron.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Sep 1, 2011 at 22:27
  • @JeffAtwood: Why u take advice from a moron? (I also find it ironic that there's a tag description at the top of the search)
    – user1228
    Sep 2, 2011 at 17:40
  • Could this possibly be the reason you've receive the mod message in the first place? ;)
    – user212646
    Dec 27, 2017 at 17:49
  • No, I sent it. Was a mod back in the day...
    – user1228
    Jan 3, 2018 at 13:48

3 Answers 3

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19

I want to be able to edit emails that I've sent to people, after those people have already read them.

As Grace Notes, mod messages send emails by default, although you can disable some of them. While that doesn't prevent us from implementing some sort of editing feature for the on-site messages, doing so reinforces the wrong idea: mod-messages are intended to be important and rare, worth getting right the first time. You should be pausing before sending, dread building up in the pit of your stomach as you think of all the things that could go wrong. A typo can be forgiven, whether corrected or not; a message that pours gas on a fire will sit in a user's inbox regardless of how much you regret it later.

A compromise solution would be to allow editing if an email hasn't been sent, and if the recipient hasn't read the message on-site yet. Donno if this is worth the complexity though.

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5
  • Perhaps the email should link to the moderator comment in the first place?
    – user1228
    Sep 1, 2011 at 15:01
  • Sigh. I actually do read and re-read and re-re-read them before sending, but one out of ten has some screwup. Like I spend so much time editing that I forget to tack on a suspension, or I edit but screw up the edit by deleting the wrong character... Why must mods always be forced to be perfect???
    – user1228
    Sep 1, 2011 at 15:14
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    Drafts might be a better compromise. It's not just spelling and grammar, sometimes it's nice to be able to have another mod check the tone of a message you are thinking of sending (without pasting the whole thing in the mod chat room).
    – Tim Post
    Sep 1, 2011 at 15:26
  • 1
    @Wont We're not forced to be perfect. We're human, and if anything, making mistakes is quite an indication that we're normal people.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Sep 1, 2011 at 15:33
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    From what I've seen, yinz are anything but "normal people." Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go prepare to be suspended network-wide....
    – Pops
    Sep 1, 2011 at 15:44
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There is a bit of issue with this, the largest part being that moderator messages are sent out as Emails as well. You can't just "edit" an email after you've sent it. While I can certainly sympathize with making errors in such a dialogue, it's not really something that can be done.

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4
  • Not necessarily. Look at Gmail's Undo Send feature.
    – SLaks
    Sep 1, 2011 at 14:49
  • 7
    I love Gmail's "undo send". It always holds onto the draft until right before I see the mistake.
    – Shog9
    Sep 1, 2011 at 15:01
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    @SLaks♦ : Imagine the outrage if it was named "delay sending for a bit, in case you change your mind". (no code changes required, mind you)
    – Piskvor left the building
    Sep 1, 2011 at 15:03
  • If you're using GMail already, check out their GMail Custom Time feature as well.
    – Pops
    Sep 1, 2011 at 15:46
1

Why not add a popup to confirm you have proof read it before submitting the form. You can implement it as a script and post it on stack apps.

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4
  • 6
    You mean an instant-clickthrough dialog? The kind that you automatically click within the first three milliseconds after it pops up on the screen, because you have been trained to do so ever since you first owned a PC?
    – user1228
    Sep 1, 2011 at 15:24
  • @Won't_: The difference here would be that you wrote the pop up as a reminder to yourself and you wouldn't think of it as a website feature. I write scripts to remind myself of things all the time. But I also read alert messages, so maybe that's why it works for me.
    – Nick Larsen
    Sep 1, 2011 at 15:27
  • I train like a marathoner to clear those dialogs as fast as possible, so I don't think it will work for me.
    – user1228
    Sep 1, 2011 at 15:30
  • 1
    You could make a script that reads and analyzes your post and looks for stupid mistakes you might worrying about. Did you insult him? Got typos/grammar? Dead links? Actually, if you put enough AI in it you could even have the script analyze the user's recent activity and make you a draft of the message. With enough time it could render moderators (or as it will call us, Fleshy Mistake Makers) useless!
    – corsiKa
    Sep 1, 2011 at 16:06

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