Managing Posts
Once you start to create multiple posts and add them to Google+, you may want to start managing your posts to some level.
Google+ offers a lot of options when it comes to managing posts. You can edit certain aspects of a post (although some aspects are permanent), delete posts, and manage or disable comments. It’s also possible to prevent other people from resharing your posts.
Changing the content of a post
You can change the content of a post and add new images, videos, and links (but not location information). Do the following to change a post:
1. Click the small gray arrow to the right of a post and choose Edit this post (as shown in Figure 6-15).
2. You can change the content of the text in the text box and add images, video, and links.
3. Click Save.
The post appears in the Stream with the updated text.
Do People Know If I’ve Edited a Post? Although there is no indication in your Stream that the post has been edited, other people see (Edited) next to the post along with the time that the post was edited. They cannot, however, see the contents of the original version.
FIGURE 6-15 Editing a post.
Some people prefer to update their posts using the Comment text box below the original, rather than changing the post itself after it has been shared. On one level, this is a more honest edit; however, I think it’s fine to edit a post up to a point. Once people have started to comment on your post, you might not want to edit it (or if you do, you should leave a comment stating that you have updated the post).
It is also possible to join in on the comments that other people make on your posts, in effect posting on your own post, rather than using the Edit this post function.
To comment on a post, do the following:
1. Click Comment.
2. Type your update or thoughts.
3. Click Post comment.
You can also +1 your own posts (which I think is somewhat egotistical, but if you really like what you said, it might be worth doing).
Deleting a post
There may come a time (typically after a late night out or during a heated exchange) that you decide it’s best to remove a post from Google+.
Fortunately, Google+ makes it easy to remove posts:
1. Click the small gray arrow next to a post and choose Delete this post (as shown in Figure 6-16).
2. Click Delete.
FIGURE 6-16 Deleting a post.
A message stating that your post has been deleted appears in your Stream, and the post vanishes from the Streams of the people you shared it with. A message appears in your Stream stating that your post has been deleted, but this does not appear in other people’s Streams. If they’ve not read it, they’ll never know it was there.
Can I See My Deleted Posts? There is no way to view your posts once they have been deleted, and you cannot recover deleted posts, so be careful before clicking Delete.
Disabling comments
One of the real joys of social networking is creating a really great, popular post and watching other people join the discussion.
Then there are the times when you don’t want people to comment on your post, either because the post is by its nature inflammatory or because you don’t feel that other people’s comments are appropriate.
Google+ offers you a fair amount of tools for managing other people’s comments (within reason — you can’t change what other people think). But if you think people shouldn’t be commenting at all on your post, you can disable comments completely:
1. Write a post and choose which Circles to share it with.
2. Click Share.
3. Click the small gray icon to the right of the post and choose Disable comments (as shown in Figure 6-17).
FIGURE 6-17 Disabling comments.
The post appears in other people’s Streams as normal, but the Comment link is not present. You have to share a post first before disabling comments, so if you want to prevent comments at all, you should click it as soon as you’ve posted.
Sometimes you will create a post and not appreciate the comments that other people make on it. In this case you can remove or flag a comment. To manage comments like this, do the following.
1. Move the mouse over the comment. This brings up comment options, as shown in Figure 6-18.
2. If you feel the comment is particularly offensive, you can report it to Google first by clicking the flag icon. If you do this by accident, you can unflag the comment.
3. Click the X icon to remove the comment from the post.
4. Click Delete.
You can disable comments at any point, so if you don’t want to keep deleting unwanted comments, you should use the Disable comments option. It is also possible to reenable comments by repeating the procedure and choosing Enable comments from the list.
FIGURE 6-18 Removing comments from a post.
Disabling reshare
Another thing you might want to consider is preventing people from resharing a post. By default, another person can share any post you write with people beyond your original Circle. Disabling resharing is great if you want to ensure that your post doesn’t wander off into the ether. Do the following to disable resharing:
1. Type your post and click Share.
2. Click the small gray arrow and choose Lock this post. The first time you do this, you get the message shown in Figure 6-19.
FIGURE 6-19 You get this message before locking a post so that it cannot be reshared.
3. If you decide to allow sharing later, click the arrow again and choose Unlock this post.
The only indication a person gets that a post cannot be shared is the absence of the Share link underneath the post.
What About Cut and Paste? There’s nothing to stop people cutting the text from your post and sharing it themselves, although it comes from them and is not linked back to you. And hopefully, the lack of a reshare option encourages them not to do so. But if it really is that big a secret, then perhaps a social networking site is not the place to be writing it in the first place.