Track Messages Changes

I am just thinking out loud ....... Would it be nice to have the following feature which I am sure no other message board already have:

- Messages Versioning : When the user edits his message, the reader would still have the ability to view the changes in a versions sequence. Something similar to MS Word versioning feature.

Ofcourse this feature can be turned off by the forum admin.

Thank you Saud for the suggestion. I admit that it is cool, HOWEVER, I don' t know how this can be done. Do you mean something like a diff comparison for documents?

I can think of one way to implement this feature....

You can keep a copy of the message being edited along with the time it was edited on. This is true for all the times this message has been edited. When the forum displays the line " message has been edited by xyz on 1/1/2002" .. you can add a hyperlink to it that, when clicking on it, will show the different versions of the message sorted according to the time it was edited on. I know this would be sometimes space consuming, but it is up to the administrator to determine if it is necessary or not (i.e. optional).

hm....

it is actually very space consuming with this implementation. you will be storing a text field multiple times just for maybe a small edit on a grammatical error.

Thanks and I will keep this feature in our list. but I am *somewhat* reluctant to add this feature.

So, youd keep it in a seperate table : MessageID | revisionID | Text

If a user wahted to activate revision, itd be kept out of the ordinary message table.
I guess youd need to show the oldest revision and links to the newer ones?

I dont have a use for it though :)

So, youd keep it in a seperate table : MessageID | revisionID | Text

That is right .. except you would replace revisionID with revisionDateTime ...

If a user wahted to activate revision, itd be kept out of the ordinary message table.
I guess youd need to show the oldest revision and links to the newer ones?

it is the other way around ... the newest (latest) revision is shown, and links to the earlier ones.

I dont have a use for it though :)

I don' t have a use for it myself ... but there must be a use for it somehow .. especially in collaborative editing.

As Samuel said, it is space consuming. But it would be an optional feature .. if there is no use for it .. the admin would just turn it off.

The good thing about it, is its uniqueness ... this forum would be the first and only forum to have such a feature.

I second that emotion, I sure do. And I do have a use for it...