Sorry this happened to you. I guess you were guilty of writing the reference too soon I think the best approach is to wait a couple of days before writing a reference. This will allow people to check their place or belongings properly and sort their thoughts to avoid writing hasty references.
Allowing references to be edited as pleased will give people a free hand to change their reference in case they didn’t like the references they received which I think is not a good idea. But I believe in case you get the statement later just like you did when you can prove something went wrong the exception could definitely be made after evaluating the case by someone else.
This made me think… WHEN is the best time to write the reference you won’t regret posting?
I personally write references while they are still fresh (the day when surfer’s left or the day after), then I let it sit in my laptop for couple of days (sometimes up to a week), re-read and edit it as needed and once I am OK with the final version I post it.
In any case, I intended to reply to this before getting sidetracked…
I don’t think there was a big discussion about this? At least I didn’t miss it… To me not allowing references to be edited was one of the few improvements on cs after they incorporated. I guess we can find more unique cases where editing a reference could be beneficial. But not having revenge references on the platform is just such a relief I think. It’s not just these references as such, but they seem to incite so many related discussions and absorb a lot of attention. I’d be more than happy to not get the best solution for every possible case, when disallowing edits on references seems to cut all that with a simple switch?
I guess maybe references can remain uneditable but recipients can have one reply max. to either thank or counter the sender. If over a period of time things changed and you wanna give a different reference, you can do so under a thread which showcase the date, or alternatively you can just give another reference and there is a system that compiles all references by a single user.
Editing references has always two aspects.
How to define correcting typos ? something correcting a typo could change completely the meaning of a reference so it is a correction or the reference had been written deliberately in a way so just changing a letter cpould change the meaning in future ?
Allowing unlimited edit yes, can lead to a “fight” between the involved parties, but sometimes can be useful, since is possible that have been a misunderstanding or that it was just a language problem.
But also another case: I had a guest , i left a positive reference. He came again two yearl after, he was always late for dinner leaving other people waiting for him.
So i corrected the reference and he was not happy. but what else could i have done ?
Having more than one reference … what to do when one is good and the other is bad ?
only one reply ? as it was on CS that the reference could be unlimited but to answer you had only 240 bytes, so if the person left you a looooooong list of lies of partial lies you cannot counteract one by one (and telling “all he said is false” most people would not consider, and could be false too (the person could have put one true thing on the list of accusations…), but listing the false things that the person wrote could be too long to fit in the answer …
Having an unlimited two way conversation justifying each one behaviour? I think is the less evil of all.
I think the best approach is to wait a couple of days before writing a reference. This will allow people to check their place or belongings properly and sort their thoughts to avoid writing hasty references.
