--- Added 2 minutes, 11 seconds, and a monkey's arse later... ---

Yes, you can edit your post instead of posting again right after it before 24 hours has passed.

EDIT: I don't think I have the problem you are talking about below...

 

I don't know what you're doing (or if there's some misconfiguration), but it shouldn't (and doesn't for me) put that unless you post again, not just edit your last post.

EDIT
See? I did it again...

 

Now I just posted a new post... Let's see what happens...

EDIT
Hmmm... I guess it may be some configuration Tal will have to look into? *shrug*

 

The "Added X minutes..." text only appears when you reply to your own post before 24 hours have passed. What happens is that both posts get merged and the time marker appears to denote how long after the original post the subsequent one(s) were merged with it.

Now why it seems that there's something odd about it is because in order to work with Ajax used for quick replies/edits it doesn't appear quite properly on the page where it happens, because it all happens without a page reload. So on that page, it'll look a bit weird.

The thing to do to make it appear proper is to reload the page once the auto-merge has done its thing. As mods/admins aren't affected I can't check if in-browser page reload does the trick, but if you go out from the thread into the forum and back into the thread again, it will look as it should.

Basically, the thing works as it should, it just looks a bit odd. Last I checked there was no better way to do it though. This isn't really meant to be a commonly used feature, just a quick and dirty clean-up hack for those people who respond to their own posts before 24 hours have passed (this used to be a minority).

So the best way to avoid it is not to reply to your own post until 24 hours have passed (if you actually need to for some legitimate reason) but rather edit your 1 post instead until someone else replies.

And yes, some forums where there is an actual need to be able to directly reply to your own posts (like in CS, when posting longer stories which don't fit in a single post), this auto-merge is disabled completely.

I hope this made sense; if not, feel free to ask for further clarification.

 

DR, this can't happen if you just edit a single post. You need two subsequent posts for them to merge and for the time marker to be automatically inserted. Neither regular (advanced) nor quick edit will result in the timer marker to be inserted into the post.

You wrote "... I've always used the edit button. But it's always been through the "quick reply" feature ...".

What has been through the quick reply feature? You can't edit via the quick reply; that simply makes a new post the same way as if you had used the Post Reply button.

Of course there's always the possibility that you've encountered a bug, but it's very unlikely. I haven't seen any posts with the time markers in them that weren't clear-cut merged double/triple posts. If you know of any, please let me know where you've seen them so I can check.

Just to repeat; the auto-merge only kicks in when you make more than 1 post in a row in under 24 hours in the same thread. It never happens with any sort of editing; there have to be at least 2 posts in a row from the same user in the same thread in under 24 hours.

If anyone's experiencing anything else, please post here with examples.

 

Ok, that's called "quick edit". To get to the full edit window, you need to press the "Go Advanced" button inside quick edit.

That's not supposed to happen... which browser do you use?

Please make a screenshot of it if you can... and see if you experience the same by going to the full edit page ("Go Advanced").

That's one of the benefits of it, yes. It basically bumps a thread without making a new post.