Consider better solutions to accidental private data sharing in reports

[zarino]

A regular source of user support mail is people accidentally publishing their name or personal details in the title ("summary"), body, or photos of a new report they‘ve just created. I imagine this must be very stressful for users, who feel like the website has tricked them into sharing information that wasn’t intended to be public, and now it’s in the public domain forever.

Right now, when a user spots that they’ve accidentally included their information in a report, their only course of action is to contact the support team, because we don’t let users edit their own reports.

I wonder whether we could set aside some time to investigate a better solution to this? A few not-very-well-thought-out ideas:

1. Let report authors edit their own reports, using the same moderation interface that staff get. Suggest the button be called "Remove personal details" and only appear for report authors. Moderation UI will probably need to make it clear that their report (and their personal details) have already been sent to the council.
2. Show authors a public "preview" of their report, before they post. Make it clear that "this is how your report will look in public", and make them confirm they’re happy, or let them edit the details—ideally with a few clicks as possible—before sending?

[abibroom]

In the time-honoured tradition of 'examples from our other services', both WTT and WDTK offer a preview before anything is sent/posted anywhere.