We have had a number of episodes where some member decides to delete all his posts by removing the content. This can often deface thread as there is now parts of the discussion missing and we end up having to spend a lot of time cleaning up.
To avoid this regular members can now only edit their posts in the first hour. Developers can still edit their own posts without restrictions.

Maybe the regular user should have the option to modify his post with appending the edit data, while not being able to change the original post
The reason for asking this is that maybe sometimes regular user don't want to popup the topic in forum, just by editing minor or not so relevant thing

[edit] but still having the option to edit the post (like me right now)

What you suggest is not possible with the forum software. If something really needs editing regular users will have to contact a moderator.

Does this restriction applies to upload forums? If yes, is it possible to remove this restriction for them?

Yes. No.

I just stumbled on this restriction when I tried edit a typo (it is just a missing article, nothing very important.)

However, I have a few times edited things like changed image or sample links in some of my replies that I consider important and valuable for the community (for instance, in posts that contain my personal test results or codec comparison tables for Sebastian Mares' listening test threads).

I am not personally happy about this new restriction, though I understand very well the reasoning and need for it.

I wonder if it could be possible to add a new user category that would allow long time members who can be considered as important contributors to edit their posts. Members like Sebastian Mares would definitely belong to this category and perhaps some "less important" guys like me could then request this status.

Thanks for your attention.

I agree with Alex B, for slightly different reasons.
I'm not a developer, but I released an auto-rating formula for foobar2000, which has different release versions etc. It would be embarrassing for me to have a "developer" status (I'm no programmer), but I will need to make first post edits for release changes and additions. So would it be possible to either do what Alex B suggested, or provide rights on a per thread basis (in my case I'll only need editing rights for one thread).

Thanks,

C.

We've also talked about another possibility regarding this - use the [! Report] button next to the post and send the changes to a moderator.
I know many reasons why it isn't optimal, how silly it feels, and even that the report form specifically says it's not for this usage, but we're not here only to ban people after all.

This does blow - I've wanted to do corrections 1-2 days after a post - but I'm comfortable with the ask-a-mod workaround.

Any chance that the edit limit be extended to something like 5 days?

Related quote from a random other thread:Although some people might take this as a limitation, it's a good thing in this situation.
The original post was from 5 hours ago, so if it was just edited, people would blindly miss the added part, because the the topic would not appear in the recent topics list again.
ETA: And moderators can merge the posts later if needed anyway.