Probably been answered before, but why are post edits visible to the community, especially when a post is "deleted"?
Edits, yes - indefinetely.
Deleted posts are removed by the garbage collector after x hours (24h?).
I guess I don't see the point of having edits visible...for any reason.
If for example, someone accidentally posts their public IP (it's happened), it's been brought to the attention of the poster, and they "remove it"...it's still visible to the community in a public edit.
If someone makes a spelling error and corrects it, who cares?...it doesn't need to generate an public edit.
If it's to prevent someone from changing a post after it's been quoted, lock the post.
If any further discussion needs to happen about a quoted post, make a new post. Quotes that go 3, 4, and 5 levels deep with responses in a single post become less readable.
Which is IMHO not really a big issue, after all each and every IPv4 address is known and the whole range can be probed in a short while... Hiding/showing IP addreesses, while sometimes helpful, has realtively minor security implications; but your argument has merit IMHO for username/password tuples....
I would say publishing a public IP (WAN) opens up the possibility of a DDoS attack.
Again all IP addresses are known already, so unless you already have enemies that are out to DOS you, and also know your forum nickname and hang out here waiting for an accidental IP reveal, posting an in most cases only temporary IP address here really does not significantly increase the risk of attack in my opinion.
Again the case is much stronger for considerably less ephemeral information like usernames/passwords, so I think your question has merit.
BTW I generally think edits should be visible, because answers might be based on earlier versions of a post so keeping that version accessible helps for context, especially when responses do not cite the text they are referring to.
I have worked with people who have been DDoSd due to public IP reveals, so whether they are "already known", its much easier when one is published in a public forum.
In fact, I think most of use tell folks to redact public IPs, passwords, etc.
That could require a reader going back several posts (i.e. the "Help me with my gaming latency" mega-thread).
This site is the only one out of several tech sites I use that does it.
Maybe a "Discord" thing, but it seems to have little benefit.
I am not convinced that is true for this forum, I can believe this happening in a gaming related forum, where the DOSing party expects a tangible advantage of hindering perceived opponents. You would need a certain kind of incompetent perpetrator that needs an explicit IP address to harass strangers (given that he/she simply could use arbitrary IP addresses instead). So again for IP addresses I consider this argument to be rather weak (and even for abusing passwords and usernames the hurdles are high for an attaker to gain an advantage from other than screwing with the affected user).
Again for passwords and usernames I agree, but for IP addresses I consider the rationale to be considerably less unambiguous.
Note that in this forum you can always expand the responded to post, but you will always just see the most recent version without an indication of edits. I have seen toxic forum behaviour in the old OpenWrt forum where users first created incendiary flame-bait posts, waited fo the responses then deleted their kindling material and posted responses criticising the evoked somewhat-over-the-top responses as if these came out of blue sky. Something much harder to pull of in this forum, mainly due to the competent moderation, but also because such shenanigans can not be pulled of here without leaving a trail of evidence.
But we clearly have different experiences in these matters and I do not want to diminish yours and will shut up about this now.
Heard you the first time.