I'm one of those who voted for 24 hours, and I'll tell you why.
I've been running my own Internet message board for almost six years now, and I've been an active member on many message boards for longer than that. Many is the time I've seen an argument or conflict spring up from a misinterpretation over what someone said in a posted message. But you see, there's the problem: People don't say anything on message boards, they write them. In a written message, the words are all there is. In a face-to-face oral conversation, however, you have facial and body language and tone of voice. Even in a telephone call, you still get tone of voice. All of these non-verbal forms of communication add meaning to the actual words being spoken, and sometimes, the actual words themselves mean less than how they're said. The words might mean one thing, but because of the way they were said, you understand some other meaning from the person who said them. But these non-verbal forms of communication are completely lost in written-only messages, such as what we have here on a message board. (Smilies and emoticons do not nearly make up for the loss, in my opinion.) This is why I've said in the past in another thread here that people should really be more careful with what they write, because it's so much easier here to confuse meanings. When your words are the only thing you have to convey your meaning, you need to make sure that your words are conveying the meaning you intend. But, in my experience, this fact is often forgotten, and people write things that come across to other people in a way they didn't intend. Now, because you can't write and post something and expect everyone to read it within five minutes, or 15 minutes or an hour, I've always had a 24-hour editing window on my own message boards, and have seen the same time allowed on many others. This gives enough time for a lot of people to read what you wrote, for you to realize if people aren't understanding your message the way you intended, and for you to fix the problem.
