-13

After the numerous downvotes I have to say first that this special case occurs for users with (Rep >= 500) and (Rep < 2000). Although this is a special case it could be a "first experience" in contributing to the network. Therefore it is a matter of onboarding and welcome.

Therefore the reported behaviour is discouraging to contribute.

Opening this Issue and been downvoted is discouraging too which signals not to contribute in making proposals or reporting annoying situations as a new user.

I have just edited a question in the Review 'First Posts' Section on SO.

As I hit save I got the message:

Another edit is awaiting approval for this post. Further edits cannot be submitted until the pending edit is reviewed.

That's not OK from the perspective that a user is spending time to reformat source code and improve readability but can't get it saved.

As a user without privileges to edit, this is not a good learning and undermines the process to motivate new users being active.

My proposal would be:

  • If a user enters the edit mode, the question is locked for another user to edit.

  • The lock should be limited in time (e.g. 10 minutes) and the automatically released (maybe with an information for the editing user)

  • If the editor cancels the edit the lock should be released.

After reading the provided links from @Tom i come to the conclusion:

  • When another User is entering the edit mode on the question a Popup should be shown:

Hurry Up! Or your Edit will be discarded!

So i keep on smiling and move on. Nothing to see here!

Improve this question
8
  • Conceptually, this seems to make sense (and I wonder where the downvotes come from - likely from the time when it did not include the proposal). I could imagine, however, that this is technically tricky, and it might be considered as low priority since concurrent edits mostly appear in the first few minutes after a post was written anyhow...
    – Marco13
    Commented Oct 30, 2019 at 17:31
  • Comments/answers there might be informative: Preventing conflicting simultaneous edits and Why is there no concurrency control and real-time synchronization for editing questions?
    – Tom
    Commented Oct 30, 2019 at 17:42
  • @NickA Think twice. Without the pop-up the edit will be discarded too, when the new editor saves faster than you ;)
    – tweini
    Commented Oct 30, 2019 at 18:23
  • "If a user enters the edit mode, the question is locked for another user to edit." - This is easily abused. I could start to edit your question, preventing anyone from submitting an edit proposal to this question, and just walk away from the computer. 10 minutes is a long time to allow something that truely must be removed.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Oct 30, 2019 at 19:44
  • I already mark an answer as accepted. For clarification i strike through my proposal.
    – tweini
    Commented Oct 30, 2019 at 21:12
  • BTW My last pop-up proposal should be read as an humorous way dealing with the problem. You really really can stop downvoting. The question itself deals with a flaw in design regarding the UX i experienced. Link provided by Tom and the Users doing the effort answering my question has shown that this can't be fixed
    – tweini
    Commented Oct 30, 2019 at 21:26
  • 1
    @tweini - A notification already generated when an edit has been made and accepted while in edit mode accepting the notification, of course, refreshes the page.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Oct 31, 2019 at 0:39
  • @Ramhound The topic is about and edit, which has been done is under review while a user is editing. Your case nothing to do with the mentioned topic.
    – tweini
    Commented Nov 2, 2019 at 0:09

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
10

I disagree with this. Someone tying up edits to a post would cause more problems that it would solve.

A 10-minute lock is incredibly long given how quickly posts attract attention. We want posts cleaned up quick so they can be made useful to make use of the wave of answerers that view it after posting. Having an edit stuck in limbo because someone's taking their sweet time improving it would harm the post more than it would help it. Even if the lock was down to like 2 minutes, you shouldn't be taking that long to edit a post. If it's really that big of a mess, your time is likely better spent elsewhere, since the OP likely didn't take very much care when posting their question.

If you can't get a post edited quickly, consider allowing a "power user" to quickly do the edits.

Yes, having a post edited while you're doing your own edits is annoying, but really, it doesn't happen that often. I edit posts constantly (I receieved "Copy Editor" on Stack Overflow recently) and a conflict only happens to me a handful of times per year.

Improve this answer
2

That's not OK from the perspective that a user is spending time to reformat source code, improve readability but can't get it saved.

My Proposal would be:

  • If a user enters the edit mode, the question is locked for another user to edit.

  • The lock should be limited in time (e.g. 10 minutes) and the automatically released (maybe with an information for the editing user)

  • If the editor cancels the edit the lock should be released.

That would IMHO be unfair against other users with higher level editing privileges which let their edits go through without need to be reviewed.
They cannot edit after you submitted yours successfully anyways.

Improve this answer
0

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .