[Pmwiki-users] Edit / Lock Pages

Jonathan Scott Duff duff
Tue Jan 27 08:02:46 CST 2004


On Tue, Jan 27, 2004 at 05:40:48PM -0800, Steven Leite wrote:
> Re: Edit / Lock Pages
>
> I noticed a recurring question (while reading the mailing list
> archives from as far back as 2002) which is:
>
> What if more than one person tries to edit a page at one time?
>
> Answer: Just have a flag on the page that says it's being edited. When
> you click the EDIT button, it gets turned ON, and when you click SAVE
> the flag is turned OFF.

Hmm. Somewhere in the mailing list archive is a response to this very
suggestion. I think it goes something like this: What happens when the
user starts to edit a page, then closes his browser rather than clicking
on the save button? What happens when a user starts to edit a page but
moves on to other things forgetting about the edit (leaving the browsesr
open)? And how do you distinguish these from someone who is just taking
a really long time to compose their changes?

> If the flag is already on (hence, the document is being edited), then
> simply re-display the wiki page with a slightly modified text. A
> message at the top of the document should read something like:
>
> Sorry this page is being edited at the moment. Try again later.

Displaying some text on the *edit* page would be a nice feature (while
still allowing them to edit the page if they so choose). That way it's
up to the WikiAuthor to decide if they want to risk clobbering someone
else's changes.

> I know even Use-Mod wiki, one of the oldest wiki's around has some
> simple protection against multiple user's editing the same document. I
> think this should be a priority to fix since the question is
> continually asked, it must be a popular topic, and worth fixing sooner
> than later.

Perhaps.  I think this is one of those things that people worry about
because it can happen, so you get alot of people talking about it, but
in practice I think it happens rarely.  (heh, but we don't have a way
of knowing do we? :-)

-Scott
-- 
Jonathan Scott Duff
duff at lighthouse.tamucc.edu



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