We did some further testings on odd behaviours of the - otherwise great - shared edit mode. Here are some findings:
Note that the plugin does not enable edit access per se. This means that if you want non-moderators to be able to collaboratively edit the post you must also make the post a Wiki (green, optional):
If I enabled Shared Edits, I have the option to make it a wiki, too. But if I do so via the Make Wiki option, it still reads “Make Wiki”. It will enter Wiki mode, though. But there is no way to revoke the Wiki.
Moderators can toggle shared edits on a topic (red) via the gear icon on the composer bar
I would like to see an option, where the right to start/stop shared edits is linked to the right to start/end a wiki. The functionality is quite similar, why choosing different rights (mods only)?
Now this is a critical one:
- I set a posting into wiki and shared edit mode
- Some people start editing away in the shared edit composer
- Some other people use the “classic” wiki editor - via the revisions link on the same posting at the same time:
and then at the bottom Edit Post
Now things get ugly real quick. Like - reeeealy ugly. Lots of overwritten stuff, changes not saved, revision conflicts. My understanding is, that shared edits is not designed to work at the same time as classic wiki editing (completely understandable from a technical view).
I figure the best way to solve this would be to redirect the Edit Post button to the new shared edits composer?
Hence the shared edits composer doesn’t offer the option to edit the metadata of the posting (titel, tags etc.), there has to be a solution for that, too.
One could argue “just tell your people to stay away from the revisions-pencil”, but this is not how it works - a lot of our users like this way instead of scrolling down to the end of a long WikiPad posting.
I see this might not an easy one to be fixed, but right now the shared edits feature is quite broken. We’ve tried it on several postings with different people, and always conflicts arose.
