I noticed that a single troper can keep a article locked for an indefinite amount of time by simply refreshing the edit page once every 20 minutes (which resets the timer) or immediately pressing edit again after committing, this can be annoying for other tropers that wish to edit as well.

this is why I'm proposing some limits to the edit lock:

1. limit the max time a troper can consecutively hold the lock to 45 minutes

2. after those 45 minute you cannot reacquire the lock for 5 minutes

3. after you save/cancel you cannot edit the page for 2 minutes

For normal edits nothing much changes besides that NinjaEdits have to wait for 2 minutes.

The actual numbers are debatable but my main goal is that when a troperific show airs a new episode everyone can get a chance to add tropes.

Also a save should not be allowed to complete if the lock has been expired and another troper has made an edit since as to avoid unintentional rollbacks.

If someone is abusing the checkout system, we can take action, but for a popular article, it's just going to be checked out a lot. I'm not sure it's worth having some kind of restriction.

The problem with stomping on each other's edits is a very thorny technical one — Eddie hasn't had the luxury to address it with all the other stuff that's going on.

edited 20th Apr '12 8:59:55 AM by Fighteer

Depending on how the lock works, it may even be possible to keep the page edit-locked indefinitely by reloading the page every 10-15 minutes, meaning it never has a chance to expire at all.

exactly my point

to fix the last issue I mentioned there just needs to be a hidden value with a timestamp and a check on save

when it fails you could show an error page with a link to the relevant history page (or just edits since the timestamp)

A moderator can override the lock. Just holler for one. This is usually the sign of an edit war and the mods are well equipped to deal with that behavior.

We can?

...I didn't know that. >.>

Neither did I. >_<

Just wanted to say that I usually hit the preview buttons at least a few times every time I update (aside from when I'm doing a lot of work on multiple pages), and I still often miss things I want to tweak again. If there were a time limit to wait before I can edit again I just wouldn't bother correcting a lot of those. Not that I'm not getting better at being correct the first time, but mistakes always happen.

I usually edit multiple times because I find the Preview feature very hard to use, especially for long pages with folders.

In addition, such a limit would make things like large-scale example cleanup that much more difficult.

Yeah, sometimes you have to spend more than the 10 or 20 minutes the timer gives you to make the changes you want, so you need to keep going back in.

If you want to make all your changes all at once, you could copy+paste the source into Notepad, cancel your edit, immediately start editing again, and copy+paste back into the editor window.

Notepad, at least the version I have, doesn't do automatic line breaks. So either it's really hard to navigate the text, or I'd have to add line-breaks. Even though I think the wiki code will ignore them and I could leave them in, I'd still have to add them. That's a ton of work.

I have done it occasionally, but for most edits it isn't practical.

edited 13th May '12 2:07:48 PM by ArcadesSabboth