Clarifying this idea in the light of responses, and further suggestions:
As this is a button beneath the edit box it would have to be fully, properly written into the PHP that is MediaWiki - i.e. this function would arrive with a new version of the software. So small additions to the framework that make it work seem okay to me.
The button only appears for a logged in user. When you click it, the page saves to "User:Example/Pagename" rather than "Pagename".
To streamline this Drafts system, it could also then save into the user subpage a magic word like "__DRAFT__" which, on any page, forces the appearance of a new tab/toolbox option like "Finalise".
Clicking Finalise is then equivalent to having done all three of these at once: * Editing the original page * Pasting the new drafted text into the edit box * Clicking "Show changes" to display a diff
In the absence of this "Finalise" button and/or "__DRAFT__" magic word, the original "Save Draft" button could simply prepend the saved user subpage with automatic links to edit and diff the original article (with exact text specified in a System Message).
Or in the simplest incarnation, "Save Draft" just saves to a user subpage and that's it.
Whatever the case, this function would be infinitely useful because edits are often longer than a single session, but not necessarily longer than the time between revisions of an article. It would simply automate what a lot of people already do anyway (i.e. end up working offline), and would encourage more high-quality focused work on articles.
I suppose that if a user start editing an article that has got a draft written by somebody else but that wasn't yet commited, then mediwiki could warn this user about the existence of this draft, possibly also showing its contents to the new contributor so that he may opt to use it as a basis for his contribution. This way we can minimize conflicts that would happen due to the draft feature otherwise.
Juca
As this is a button beneath the edit box it would have to be fully, properly written into the PHP that is MediaWiki - i.e. this function would
This can easily be done in JavaScript and thus be enabled by every user on an opt-in basis. If there is serious interest in this I could whip something up. With a bit of extra work/AJAX this could even be extended to SubSection saving and restoring only.
But the problem I see with this feature is article forking (as others have said). Someone wants to overhaul a page and saves it as a draft, in the mean time other users edit the original article and... desaster :) Maybe only activate the feature for new articles by default?
"Daniel Schwen" wrote:
As this is a button beneath the edit box it would have to be fully, properly written into the PHP that is MediaWiki - i.e. this function would
This can easily be done in JavaScript and thus be enabled by every user on an opt-in basis. If there is serious interest in this I could whip something up. With a bit of extra work/AJAX this could even be extended to SubSection saving and restoring only.
But the problem I see with this feature is article forking (as others have said). Someone wants to overhaul a page and saves it as a draft, in the mean time other users edit the original article and... desaster :) Maybe only activate the feature for new articles by default?
Can't this be achieved by saving article + reverting to good version? This way if someone wants to improve the article, will find your draft on the history. They are also available for anyone. Probably easier if we get the 'stable version' of articles.
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