Is there a way to notify me that another user is writing an answer? Some (mainly simple) questions get duplicate answers just for that reason: A user starts answering while another user has almost finished his\her answer. That causes the "Damn, got me by 17 seconds!" comments.
A little banner that notifies me about the answer being written, perhaps with the first sentence, would be helpful. It would also save effort, time and frustration.
User "Jon Skeet" is writing an answer - just give up now
The little banner notifies you once they've written the answer. That's as soon as I want to be discouraged. Also, if implemented, you could find yourself with a plethora of those awkward moments where the two of you notice each other is typing and stop at the same time. But, unlike IM, you can't say, "You first."
You can always delete your answer if you got beat, or edit it to include better info, links, etc.
There's already a notice when users have completed an answer. There's no way to know if what someone else posts will even be similar to what you're writing, so unless the question is trivial with a quick and simple answer (which is the case with the example you're using) there's no reason to believe that they'll be typing the same thing.
Polling the server to determine if someone is simply typing an answer would be excessive, and more often then not, unnecessary.
I can see this being possible using Javascript to send a notice to the server when the answer box is being changed and then pushing that information out to the users in much the same way as the answer posted dialog.
However, I can see this being noisy on the server side as it has to process thousands of these requests and send out the responses.
Open a duplicate tab with the question & refresh it just before submitting your answer. You will see exactly what is there at that time.
