The new functionality wouldn't allow users to edit the post, but rather alert the author that there is a typo that might need fixing--does that help clarify my previous comment? I agree that allowing users to edit posts without the approval of the author could do more harm than good.
Imagine that there is another link below each post that opens the text of the post in a new window in which you are able to highlight typos (this could be programmed in a variety of ways--I would want to do more research on it to determine the best one). Once submitted, highlighted typos will automatically be Direct Messaged to the author in a automated format (see example below) and a little red dot will appear in the margin next to a line for which a typo alert was submitted--helping make sure authors are not flooded with alerts about the same typo. If a dot in the margin is too hard to program, here is an alternative: When a user clicks on the link to create a typo-alert, the highlighted text from previous typo-alerts submitted by other users is displayed in the pop-up window.
i.e.
Dear [Name]
User [Name] has found the following typos in your post. [copy of sentence with highlighted text from typo-pop-out box inserted here]. You can correct any typos in your post by using the Edit function.
Thanks, The Typo-Alert Generator
This may not be the best system, but through collaboration I think we can figure something out. Until there is some kind of efficient system in place that leverages the fact that web programming can be easily changed to suit a site's specific needs, I think we should just ignore typos and allow the highest level users to edit any glaring mistakes for clarity as they see fit.
That sounds like a decent solution. I have no idea how hard the little red dot would be to program, but I think it would be distracting for the people who don't care about the typos. The highlighted text from previous typo-alerts makes sure that only the people who care get the information.
I don’t want to be too dogmatic about this claim, but Godzilla is unrealistic. I don’t want to be too non-dogmatic about this claim either. OK then, just how dogmatic should I be? I have all sorts of reasons for thinking that skyscraper sized lizards or dinosaurs don’t actually exist. Honestly, the most important of these is probably that none of the people who I imagine would know if they did exist seem to believe in them. I never hear any mention of them in the news, in history books, etc, and I don’t see their effects in the national death statistics. No industries seem to exist to deal with their rampages, and no oil or shipping companies lose stock value from lizard attacks. Casually, at least, Godzilla attacks don’t seem like the sort of basic fact about the world that people could just overlook. How confident should I be that Godzilla type creatures don't exist?
I can also fairly easily recognize good biological reasons not to expect there to be giant rampaging lizards. The square/cube law, in its many manifestations, is the most basic of these, but by itself is not completely decisive. I can imagine physical workarounds that would allow sequoia giganticus sized reptiles, but not without novel bio-machinery that would take a long time to evolve and would surely be found in many other organisms. I can even vaguely imagine ways in which biology might prove resistant to conventional military weaponry and ecological niches and lifestyles that might support both such biology and such size, though much of my knowledge of Earth’s ecosystems would have to be re-written. For all that, if I lived in a world where essentially all authorities did refer to the activities of godzilla giganticus I would probably accept that they were probably correct regarding its existence. What should a hypothetical person who lived in a world where the existence of Godzilla type creatures was common knowledge and was regarded as an ordinary non-numinous fact about the world believe?
Godzilla would be considerably more perplexing than thunderstones, and would have to be considerably better documented to be credible. Even with the strongest documentation I would have substantial unresolved questions, inferring that Godzilla’s native ecosystem must be quite different from any known (possibly inferring that the details are classified), and even wondering whether Godzilla was a biological creature at all as opposed to, for instance, a giant robot left behind by an advanced and forgotten civilization, a line of inquiry that would greatly increase my credence in secret history of all kinds. For the most part though, I would probably go about life as normal. Even Natural Selection, the most damaged part of my world-view, would endure as a great intellectual triumph explaining the origins of almost all of Earth’s life forms. Only peripheral facts, such as distant history and the nature of some exotic ecosystems would be deeply called into question, and such facts are not tightly integrated with the broader edifice of science. In a conversation with a hypothetical Michael Vassar who believed in Godzilla, the issue would typically not come up. Science in general would not be called into question in my mind, but should it be?