Re: Edit flag for Other Users

I don't really see the use of it.

Additionally it might be a bid hard to implement, because HTTP is a stateless protocol, and you can't know if somebody's editing a node or not. Sometimes I hit the "Comment On" link, and close the tab without writing anything. And sometimes I take 20 minutes for one reply without using any link in the monastery.

So it's virtually impossible to get a good answer to the question "is $user editing a node".

Comment on Re: Edit flag for Other Users

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Re^2: Edit flag for Other Users by talexb (Chancellor) on Dec 10, 2007 at 15:54 UTC
Well, I think it's a useful feature, but I also agree that it's virtually impossible to know when a user is busy until they click on the Preview button -- so while they're writing their first draft, it's impossible for the web server to know that's what the user is doing. Alex / talexb / Toronto "Groklaw is the open-source mentality applied to legal research" ~ Linus Torvalds	[reply]
Re^3: Edit flag for Other Users by jdporter (Paladin) on Dec 10, 2007 at 16:00 UTC
The other (and I think more compelling) problem is that the Other Users content has significant lag, based on cached information; it is anything but real time. So by the time that new flag you propose pops up next to a user's name, they could have already posted that writeup and moved on. The other thing to consider is that being "busy" on PerlMonks entails a lot more activities that just drafting a writeup; you could be voting on considerations in Nodes To Consider, tweaking your various User Settings, sending private /msgs, etc. A word spoken in Mind will reach its own level, in the objective world, by its own weight	[reply] [d/l]

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