Big talk timers - they don't do the job intended, get rid of them

Posted by Cedric Lackpot, 2012-04-27 16:32 BST

Well, I guess this belongs here and not in meta.

I have come to the conclusion that, for me at least, timers are a bloody nuisance that stifle creativity and more importantly spontaneity. Death to the timers.

There are a couple of things that prompted this post : 1. I wanted to reply to LP's BT post about chat rooms, but no, I have to set a timer, safe in the knowledge that by the time it trips I will have forgotten half what I want to say and lost half my motivation. 2. I'd already set a BT new thread timer the other day, on spec, on the off chance that I might want to post to BT. Consequently, because of reason 1 the timer has prevented me from doing something desirable, and reason 2 shows that it doesn't really impede me doing something at the drop of a hat. I therefore conclude that the timers aren't fit for purpose.

I realise that other people are different, but for myself (non-flippant) writing is bloody hard enough in the first place, and I spend an inordinate amount of time editing and sub-editing when I have an idea I want to make solid and to communicate clearly and succinctly. That act of writing and re-writing is fundamental to the process of coalescing my thoughts into a coherent argument, and therefore writing when the idea first arrives is a key part of the process. Timers in no way assist that, but they do impede it.

So, why not begin composing replies in Notepad or some such, and copypasta when the timer trips? Well yeah, but does that not demonstrate that the timer only impedes the process of posting and does not add anything creatively? The timer doesn't prevent me composing, it just prevents posting. And anyway point 2 above shows that, with a little foresight, it doesn't prevent posting either.

As a compromise I would strongly urge the implementation of a reply composition page with a delay on posting. Delaying composition stifles thought; merely delaying posting does not. But I still think it would be a half-arsed compromise.

The key thing here is that timers were implemented to put the kibosh on an anticipated problem. But it's silly in a place like the Edge, which is full of thoughtful, articulate, reflective people, to speculatively block possible unwanted  behaviour before it even happens. That's like the leg jerking before the hammer has struck the knee. This is not 4chan - what I think is really needed is a retrospective way of tidying up, by deleting threads or moving them to ST, or flagging them somehow, or allowing authors the right to edit, archive, or delete them.

I'm off to set some more timers. Yes, I know that's not how it's meant to be, but at the moment I have two choices - broken BT or slightly broken BT. I'll go with the latter for the time being.