[wp-hackers] GSoC Idea: Collaboratively editing a Post

[Jeremy Clarke]

Personally I think this kind of thing might be more than WP really
needs. While it would be pretty cool to have a full-on group editing
thing It seems like it would be really complicated and would replicate
a lot of functionality already defined in the existing
Roles/Capabilities system of WP. Who can edit a post is already
controlled based on roles, so I don't see why it should be much more
complicated than that for any given post.

I think if anything what WP needs is just a cleanup/enhancement of
what already happens when you edit a file together. The last few
versions have added things like the message "Be careful, someone else
is currently editing this post" (not a direct quote) or the one "There
is an autosave of this post that is newer than what you are looking
at". I think you could take these simple things to the next level and
it would cover a lot of the ground of your proposed system without
imposing such a massive paradigm shift as to how a WP workflow flows.

Some ideas:

  * when someone else is editing a document have a message at the top
that reloads regularly and shows some kind of DIFF view of what they
have changed
  * useful warning messages if WP is about to autosave in a way that
will overwrite the recent changes made by someone else.

Basically just working through the existing system and adding in more
useful shared work messages and making it easy to choose between
different versions of edits when they come up.

-- 
Jeremy Clarke | http://simianuprising.com
Code and Design | http://globalvoicesonline.org