[Mediawiki-l] simultaneous edition

[Ricardo Rodríguez]

---
Ricardo Rodríguez
Your XEN ICT Team
>>> Fred Bauder<fredbaud at waterwiki.info> 24/03/07 7:39 >>>


>I'm not sure if your question is about coding or editing. When 
>an edit conflict happens you need to hit your back button and 
>save the new content, which, hopefully, is in a compact 
>section. Then you need to take a look at the other edit, by 
>checking the edit history. Not a good idea to simply replace it. 
>If both edits are spread all over the page, all you can do is start 
>over. So a good habit not to make extensive edits over the entire 
>text of a popular article, especially if you are taking a lot of time. 
>I can't imagine a coding solution for conflicts between two edits >
>when both make numerous changes spread over the whole article.
>
>Fred

Hi, Fred,

Thanks for the explanation. I am afraid I have missused the term "coding" in my first message. I understand now that "editing" is the right word.

I think I get the point. I agree about the good habit of a by section edition and short time edition sessions and frequent save hits. But the problem is that I can not enforce these habits (or I do not know how to do that). Thus, any action that can not be enforced as part of an use policy, risks to be never considered. If frequent edition conflicts risk the edition process, the solution will be to forget the wiki as a collaborative edition solution. Even worse: to forget collaborative edition at all!

My challenge is to convince people about the fact that collaborative edition using wikis is a good idea. I truly think it is! So, I think MediaWiki should have a better support for simultaneous edition. 

I can figure out two complementary paths:

1. By avoiding completely risky situations. Or at least by producing a clear warning issued by the system when an user start editing a section already edited by other. Something close to the early proposal by Frederik Dohr. I do not know if this is possible at all by using a PHP application. Of course this will avoid non-conflictive simultaneous edition, but is there any way of detecting conflicts on the go?...

2. ... a better support to manage conflicts.  Has anybody integrated Synchroedit with his/her wiki?

As MediaWiki by itself is a "collaborative effort", I should be ready to contribute. I only can do that now by posting my own poor experience trying to promote its use. I do hope I will able to do something better in the near future! Thanks for your help.

Any new input will be welcome!

All the best,

Ricardo