Issue 71 - madebyfrogs - Two people editing the same page can mess up each other's changes

Issue 71:	Two people editing the same page can mess up each other's changes	‹ Prev 9 of 60 Next ›
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Status:	Accepted
Owner:	----
Type-Defect
Priority-High
Component-Persistence
Usability

Reported by martijn.niji, Sep 28, 2008

What steps will reproduce the problem?
1. Editor 1 starts editing a page
2. Editor 2 makes some changes and saves the page
3. Editor 1 finishes his changes and saves the page

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

Expected output is that Editor 2 receives a message telling him that the
page is currently being edited with a "try again later" message.

Actual: Editor 2 loses his changes due to Editor 1 saving his older copy
over it.

Please use labels and text to provide additional information.

Comment 1 by colinscroggins, Sep 29, 2008

In my experience, check-in/out systems are worthless because so many people
habitually leave pages checked out, that most editors automatically overide the
checkout, which defeats the purpose.

I would like to suggest that rather than adding a layer of check-in/out management to
the program, the number of logged in users could be displayed as a number in the user
tab (see screenshot). You could also notify the author of a conflicting page edit by
using an AJAX ping every 60 seconds, that results in a lightbox-type
message(http://www.lokeshdhakar.com/projects/lightbox2/), stopping edits and
requiring confirmation to proceed, if the page save date changes.

	users.png 28.5 KB View Download

Comment 2 by martijn.niji, Sep 29, 2008

I wasn't thinking about a check-in/out system personally.. My initial thought was
locking the edit function to a user. When that user hasn't saved or cancelled the
edit before his/her login session expires, the lock is cancelled.

The lock can also be cancelled after X minutes for example. Should be very
transparant to the user and not difficult to implement.

Displaying the number of logged in users isn't very usefull for this particular
problem since it doesn't say anything about how many users are trying to edit the
same page.

The problem with relying on AJAX is that as soon as someone's browser is acting up,
the problem potentially returns. Not good for a crucial element like this.

We could however, use AJAX popups to notify a user about the existing lock or notify
them that the page is no longer locked.

Comment 3 by colinscroggins, Sep 29, 2008

As few people as I have working on my sites, I would like to know how many logins are 
currently active. Seems like for the lock to be based on session, we would need to 
drastically reduce the session timeout (as in <4 hours).

Comment 4 by martijn.niji, Sep 29, 2008

"I would like to know how many logins are currently active." - I'm not saying we
can't make that info available.. :-)

As far as I'm concerned, the login session timeout should be something like 30 minutes.

Comment 5 by martijn.niji, Jul 31, 2009

(No comment was entered for this change.)

Labels: -Milestone-Undecided

Comment 6 by lodewijkadlp, Oct 18, 2009

seems to me that when someone goes over a session timeout (30min to several days) he
REALLY doesn't want to lose his changes!

I would suggest an 'are there people editing' or 'who's editing this file' kind of
thing. (no-one want's locks and checking in and out, people just want to know whether
they should or shouldnt be editing something)

And the bar used for '(..) saved!' to say '(!)this file has been changed' when it is.
(or a warning before you save)