You've been asking for it for absolutely ages, and now it is finally here: the incredible product that not only washes whiter but also lasts longer, won't spoil your appetite between meals and means you don't have to take two bottles into the shower. Yes, you now have preview functionality on comments.
Let the rejoicing be heard throughout the hills and valleys and all throughout the land etc etc.
Meg Pickard, our head of social ... err, stuff ... has a post on the Inside Guardian blog explaining how it works. (Basically, you get a layer over the page; you can abandon the comment, without posting, by clicking the "X". Else, post your comment.)
Note that this is not editing functionality, and that's not likely to come at all. As Pickard explains:
We've implemented preview rather than edit functionality mainly because editing of comments after publishing is rather open to abuse and can cause confusion, with people going back and changing their words (or minds!) making subsequent replies lack context or sense.
It would be awful if comments lacked context or sense, of course. As she also points out, previewing isn't a panacea:
It won't help you with an attack of l'esprit de l'escalier, but it might help you pick up any spelling or formatting errors which might have snuck into your comment.
As long as you pick it up before you hit "post", obviously, because of the editing thing. See above.
We'd like to go into detail about the army of kittens and the mutant hamsters but we're filing for the patent. Sorry about that.
OK? So now we never, ever want to see any spelling, grammar or logical errors in your comments. Ever again. Unless, that is, you find a spelling mistake in any atricle you read here, in which case you're absolved.
