wiki idea?
Author
Discussion

dazren

Original Poster:

22,612 posts

290 months

Friday 7th November 2008
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PROBLEM - Two people working on a wiki and the last person to hit the update button overwrites the contribution of the other person.


QUERY - Can this be solved by only allowing one person editing rights at a time?

Mr Will

13,719 posts

235 months

Friday 7th November 2008
quotequote all
If you start editing a wiki then it does (should?) lock it from others editing it for 5(?) minutes, but it unlocks after this point to stop problems occuring if somebody leaves an editing window open.

Its not a perfect solution, especially with big wikis, so problems are starting to appear then we might have to look for a better option.

thumbup

PetrolTed

34,468 posts

332 months

Friday 7th November 2008
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The most messed up Wikis I've seen are the ownership lists. TBH that info is better placed in the 'Members Cars' part of the site so that it links into your profile etc.

Xenocide

4,286 posts

237 months

Friday 7th November 2008
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You cooooooooooould put a block on that users session. Instead of seeing the requested page (like if they click on another link it'll say "Save changes to wiki. [Save][Discard][Cancel - still working on it]"

It does mean that they can't still browse the forums while they're editing but (they could have it open in another browser, not logged in) it should negate the locking problem. smile

[Edit: The sessions time out automatically smile - in PHP anyway.]

Edited by Xenocide on Friday 7th November 20:07

RacingPete

9,197 posts

233 months

Friday 7th November 2008
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We have to cope with page abandonment where the browser is just closed. I have implemented locking systems across a few other websites and do find that they aren't 100% foolproof and need a time based clean-up system running behind the scenes too.

It probably does require a little rethink, but the 5 minute lock at the moment is probably the best solution with the amount of usage the wikis have at the moment... but probably look at extending the time a little more for slower edits.