# Edit message per section for long messages (aka wikipedia)
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/edit-message-per-section-for-long-messages-aka-wikipedia/37717
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [2016年一月11日 00:21 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/edit-message-per-section-for-long-messages-aka-wikipedia/37717 "2016-01-11T00:21:41Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@meglio](https://meta.discourse.org/u/meglio)
#### Post date: [2016年一月11日 00:21 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/edit-message-per-section-for-long-messages-aka-wikipedia/37717/1 "2016-01-11T00:21:41Z")
Sometimes, our messages are way too long. For example, a first message in the contest topic where the rules are explained, examples and advices are given.
Still, we promote “less but longer messages” in our forum, otherwise it may become a mess when a topic is summarized. So, we have to follow our own rules and post long messages as well!
We divide messages into sections with using a horizontal line separator:
* * *
… or just `` tags.
The proposition is to allow editing every section separately.
A section is a piece of topic message divided by any of the following:
- a horizontal line separator
- H1 tag (text prefixed with `#`)
- H2 tag (text prefixed with `##`)
The number of edits saved in the database might increase. However, such edits will be more atomic, and anyway they’re cheap, thus not sure if it’s a drawback or not.
Benefits:
- easier to edit
- less to scroll in the message editor
- better, smaller atomic edits (aka commits in git - better to commit smaller changes and more often)
No other changes needed - “edit” history viewer needs no changes.
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### Author:  [@mpalmer](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mpalmer)
#### Post date: [2016年一月11日 00:50 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/edit-message-per-section-for-long-messages-aka-wikipedia/37717/2 "2016-01-11T00:50:52Z")
I’d be interested in this feature, too, because I use Discourse as a knowledge base, and those articles can end up being quite long. We may be a vocal minority, though. 😀
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### Author:  [@mcwumbly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mcwumbly)
#### Post date: [2016年一月11日 00:55 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/edit-message-per-section-for-long-messages-aka-wikipedia/37717/3 "2016-01-11T00:55:14Z")
I wonder if revision handling for article content could actually be backed by a git repository.
Since revision history is not accessed too often, it’s conceivable that there would be a way to have the latest content exist as text blobs in the database, with history in a single git repo that had a file for each post, named by its ID, which should be stable.
How crazy an idea is that?
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### Author:  [@mpalmer](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mpalmer)
#### Post date: [2016年一月11日 01:46 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/edit-message-per-section-for-long-messages-aka-wikipedia/37717/4 "2016-01-11T01:46:48Z")
We’ve discussed “archiving” important topics (like, say, those in a knowledge base…) into some sort of external place, to access if/when everything Discourse-related is on fire. Nothing’s been done yet, but it’s definitely in mind. Our plan was just to dump the current text of the first post in a topic to a static directory somewhere, because revisions are already kept inside Discourse, but a git repo isn’t a _completely_ insane idea. I’d expect it would be third-party-plugin territory, though.