So, having applied to a few games and having had more than a few players apply to mine, I've noticed that people who send in a Request to Join can't edit it after it's submitted, even though in all ways but one it's basically a normal message thread. It's the only message in existence I can't seem to edit. Not the replies, those seem to be normal, but just the very first RTJ post.

I'm... kind of wondering both why this is, and if we can maybe get the edit button up there?

it was created to make sure details like age could not be changed.

You will note that the RTJ messages are from the players actual RPOL account, not their 'character' within the game.  All the messages transacted between a GM and the player who hasn't been added to the game yet will be tied to the RPOL account rather than the a Character within the game.  They are in that sense outside the game, and not subject to editing, for the reason mentioned before.  Once the player has actually been added to the game, their future posts will be posted as their character after that point.  Granted, with the changes in how age statements are now handled, it might be open to revisiting the policy.

They might be hesitant to do so though if there are legacy/inactive games, which have not had people log into the game in question to give their current system of age statement.  But I think the way the current system works, they, even if in the game, wouldn't have access to the non-public threads in the game until after they have made their age statement and had it confirmed.  So that might not be an issue with legacy games, depending on the perspective of Jase and the Mods regarding 'protecting' that old information.

The only thing that even GMs can do with them is delete/purge the thread, which used to put the GM in a potential position of being outside of TOS for admitting a player without an age statement if it was an adult game, and it had their only official age statement. (if the statement was made using a character post, rather than rpol account post, it was considered invalid, as anyone 'could have' made the post if characters had changed hands.

That all basically makes sense. A little odd to me, but it makes sense.

So, what say the higher ups? Any chance to get the edit button now? Or are there reasons we might be missing?

I believe that when this came up previously, jase explained that the issue was that, unless you're a member of a game, you can't edit any message in that game.  And once you are a member, you can't edit messages posted under another name (which would include those posted under your non-member ID).

This is another reason why I ask my newly-recruited PCs to send me a new PM under their character's name. Once they've done so, I delete their "Access to..." thread from my list. It helps when I need to send a PM to a specific character, I can just scan the 'From' column of the list to find them.

I just start a new PM thread titled "[GM <-> Playername] Private Thread" and quote any of the important bits back at the player.  I'm not a fan of deleting private threads, really.