Hey Twitter. To Err is Human, to Edit is Divine. 🙏🏻
I write a tweet.✏️
I make a mistake.😱
I want to edit it.🤔
To err is human, to forgive (edit) is divine.
Between the time of posting an editing a tweet, my tweet is exposed to reactions such as replies, likes, retweets and embeds.
My edit should not change the meaning of the tweet entirely. The edit has to be minor. Spelling mistakes, @ references, minor additions or removals.
With the freedom to edit, people would have other plans in mind, like changing the context entirely after a tweet has gained some reputation.
Here’s a recent Tweet from Twitter. It is a tweet that shows support to #EqualPayDay and has garnered a good reputation.
This tweet has been liked more than 4000 times and retweeted more than 1000 times.
For instance, after so many interactions with this tweet, if the same tweet were edited as shown below, it would portray an entirely different picture.
Looking at the edited tweet, it would seem like a negative subject has gained strong traction and has been supported by a wide audience. The audience who liked, retweeted, replied would feel cheated.
Websites that embedded this tweet, showing support from #EqualPayDay and proud that @Twitter supports #EqualPayDay, would get bad reputation as well, because the edited tweet, conveys the exact opposite.
Which tweets are edited?
When a tweet is edited, a UI feedback would let the reader know that the tweet has been edited. The reader would make an effort to find what exactly was changed and this would avoid confusion.
A highlight would show that the tweet has been edited.
On second thoughts, this approach has a lot of drawbacks. If text is removed, no text can be highlighted. What then? What if an image or video is removed? Will people perceive the highlight as a change or an emphasis? What if the timeline has a lot of edited tweets? Yellow (or the highlight color) would be splashed all over the timeline.
So I went for a better design decision. An edited tweet can have the word Edited highlighted. This would instantly bring the user’s attention to the fact that the tweet has been edited.
Notice the difference below?
This would be easy on the the timeline as well.
Clicking on edit, the user can view the edit history and see what exactly has been changed.
Highlighting the words in edit history, instead of the timeline, would let the user to easily conclude what has been edited. Highlights would show changes in every version of the tweet.
Can a user edit a tweet forever?
No. Editing forever would lead to the confusion such as the one above. 5000+ reactions later, a tweet shouldn’t be edited.
My tweets have rarely gone beyond 10 likes and retweets. Image if this were @katyperry or @taylorswift13 or @realDonaldTrump and they can edit it hours or days later? Imagine a hacker getting into their accounts and changing their tweets? This would lead to chaos.
The best solution would be the one that deals with time (5 minutes) or reactions (25 to 50 reactions). A reaction can be either a like, a retweet, a reply, a DM or a view.
A user can always 👉🏻 delete the tweet and write a new one.
For an average user like me, a window of 5 minutes would be more sufficient. For those with a huge fan following, not providing the option to edit would force the user to delete the tweet and tweet exactly as intended.
For a user who makes a mistake often, an option to post after 5 minutes, can be given to provide enough room to edit a tweet, before it sees the light of the day.
In summary:
5 minutes window or 25 to 50 reactions based on data should be ideal limit for a user to edit a tweet, after which, deleting (with an option to copy the tweet) and writing a new tweet would be the only option.
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