How on earth do you expert messaging editing to work. Are irc clients supposed to magically redraw the buffer and edit logs??!
You can already tell if a link is an image, because they're posted a link to an image..... Some irc clients already inline images posted....
So logs are no longer append-only? This seems like a uselessly complex thing for all servers and client logs to support. Seems like it would break many things. What situation needs an edit feature? I can think of none, since a quick follow-up correction is simple.
Also, edits would ruin many of the funny situations encountered on bash.org. :)
Logs can be append-only, while clients can still show edits. These aren't in conflict.
It wouldn't have to be complex, either, and it certainly isn't useless (says me and a few other people already!).
Quick example: I recently typed out about 10 long lines of business development chatter in Slack, the first of which contained a list of prospects. I realized I left a few out in my list, and edited the message to add them in. Without editing, I'd have to have either posted the complete list again or added them in as a second comment. Editing the original message is simply a lot less confusing.
Personally, I would treat the chat like a forum post and take more time to confirm that what I was posting was accurate. I have never used chat as for business purposes though, so thanks for the insight.
I do wonder though, should IRC evolve to be like Slack or should it evolve idependently? I feel that the new features should be more vital, rather than "neat"... like maybe more focus on privacy and/or anonymity. Undoubtedly, I am just resisting change...
I think we're at the vi/emacs point of this discussion. Editing messages works well for me and my team, and we're glad of the feature. You don't have to like it, and I wouldn't force you to edit messages. The world supports both and we both win. :)
We use Slack heavily in our organization and editing happens all the time - whether it's to fix a typo, or insert a missing word, or cross out something we wrote earlier and put in the corrected version. Once you can do it you'll learn the value of it.
Same here except for cosmetic changes. It's the only way to be certain that people have read your corrected version, and not just the pre-corrected original.
I used to work at Bloomberg, where the terminal's MSG function supports editing and outright retraction of any message that hasn't yet been read (and thus, it also supports universal unfakeable read/unread status indicators on sent mail).
