Categories: Social Media

Editing Comments and Posts in Google+, Pros and Cons

One of the unique features of Google+ is the ability to edit comments and posts. In Facebook, if you misspell a word in your comment or status update, the only way to fix it is to delete the entire post and rewrite it.

PRO

With the “edit” feature in Google+, it does not matter how many errors you make, because you always have the ability to go back and correct them.

CON

There exists the ability to edit/change thoughts on a conversation after comments have already been posted. This could possibly lead to misleading situations.

Take the following scenario: I start a discussion on a certain topic and after people have engaged in the conversation I change the existing subject all together and without notifying the participants.

Here is a Google+ update I posted today to my work circle:

After I got few answers to my question, I changed the question to how I like to see it 🙂

In reality this change of context does not happen in human interactions without the awareness of all participants…unless you were interviewed by an unfair news station and when later watching your interview you realize that it was butchered and only passages were aired taking everything out of context.

Request to the Google+ team:

To be fair and accurate to all participants and readers, comments should always be attached to the original topic they’ve posted under/replied to; whether they were a reply to an original post or to someone’s comment. Once a preceding piece was edited all those who commented should be notified of the change and have the ability to approve, delete or change their reply based on the alteration to the original topic.

Allaedin Ezzedin

VP Analytics Engineering Allaedin wisely guides friends, family and colleagues with honesty and care. He is a long time digital analytics industry veteran leading Cardinal Path’s analytics team with over a decade of experience as a digital marketing and senior analytics consultant.