This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Fast Eddie: Pulling out for discussion:
- Some software, like newer versions of MediaWiki, remember when an edit begins, and can notify a user when their edit conflicts with a previously finished one.
I'm reading this as a Take That! against this wiki. We notify an editor immediately if someone "has" the article.
Eric DVH: Yes, I'm afraid it is a Take That. I tend to edit longer articles by dumping them into an external text editor, then pasting the results whole back into the form and submitting that. If somebody swoops in and does an edit after my lock times out but early enough where their lock times out before I submit my edit, I steamroller their edit. Sometimes I'll remember to check the history afterwards for that, but not always.
Honestly, while I'm in total awe of this site running reasonably smooth by a few random joes in their spare time from an extra PC in somebody's house, the wiki software the site uses has a lot of limitations. I'll admit I have no idea about the tradeoffs of different wiki packages or the difficulty of transitioning from one to another, but the software being used is clearly getting in the way of both the admins and the users on a continual basis. This site is really fun, and its oddities are also amusing in a quirky way, but I seriously think a platform switch is long overdue.
