Sometimes a player does not have the time to make a full post, but they do want to get a post started, or they have a post to make, but they need to ask the GM for a particular piece of information so they make a post and put a note at the end saying that they'll edit it at a later time. This works well and good, but theirs no way for players to see that the post has been updated without opening the thread. Some players, like myself, rely on the "new post" icon on the threads to know when to look at them and it can be easy to forget a post needed to be edited, so the game can stall a bit if nobody knows that they can reply. This can be avoided by making an additional post to draw attention to the thread, then deleting it when a reply has been posted, but this can be annoying to do, so I propose the addition of a new icon to be displayed when a post has been edited.

This sort of thing has been suggested before, but unfortunately it is not possible, because of the way the system tracks posts.  RPoL marks a thread as having new posts if the time of the most recent post in that thread is later than the time of your most recent visit to that thread.

It does not track any information about earlier posts in the thread.

Mm, that makes sense. I don't really know how the system is set up (I did try to look at it using the "inspect element" feature of Google Chrome, but couldn't find the code that changes the image), but I imagine it could be made to track the "last edited" time of the most recent post and compare it to the "last post" time and the time a user last visited.

Not really, no.

It would have to track the time for every single post in a thread to know which is the most recently edited one.  Multiply the potentially hundreds of posts in every thread by the number of threads in a game, and then by the number of games on the site.  Massive increase in server load.

Then all it would do is post an icon on the menu, which would tell you that a post had been edited, but not which one.

It seems as though it would be easier if players/GMs would take personal responsibility and update the OOC.

"Hey guys, I updated msg 65 in the Backyard thread."

That's generally the etiquette as I understand it. Some notice that whatever change has been made and some kind of statement of impact.

"I changed what I said earlier, I was misremembering something," etc.

I was thinking that, rather than being for changing past actions it would be useful to change additions to the most recent post, otherwise, yes, some notification in an OOC thread would be more appropriate.

It does sound like the feature would be harder to implement and less useful than I had originally thought, though.

It would also be tricky because of posters like me, who always seem to go back and fiddle with their word choice and spelling while not changing much of substance.

In reply to kouk (msg # 8):

That sums up my concerns nicely.  While I have no doubt there will be times that such a feature would be an advantage, by and large it would be annoying to most of users the most of the time.

I've never seen anyone ever go back and change the substance of an IC post.  I've only ever seen people edit grammar and the like.  Why wouldn't substantive additions just be added as another post?  In the rare occasions I've had to retcon a players post I've immediately mentioned the change in the OOC thread.

In reply to Lancebreaker (msg # 10):

A manual way of doing what's been asked would be to bump the thread in question, but then I think that would cause a few furrowed brows as people try to figure out why the thread has an update.

For differentiating changes to a post, if there is something of substance I alter I make it a practice to try and put an EDIT "tag" in myself.

EDIT: This line would be an example of something added.

The above being the (EDIT: one) example.

I've gone back and edited an IC thread.  Just recently I made a post in a game and the GM sent me a private message and said, "Hey, it seemed that you wanted to do X, you know you can do that, right?"  And I said, "No, I thought X worked in [this other manner]."  And lo, the GM spake and said, "Thou mayest go back and edit your post if you want."  And it came to pass that I did so. :p (Just having some fun with the terminology there.)  That wasn't the first time that I've edited a post either.