Help talk:Edit conflict

Edit conflicts are annoying

Just wanted to say that. I often encounter them during WP:RPP, WP:AFD and similar types of pages which are being continually edited. It can be a real pain during AfDs because sometimes it actually makes me rush the comment, and my thoughts about the subject may come out faster and with less care if I wasn't expecting a possible edit conflict. Can anyone relate to this? --h i s ^{s p a c e} _{r e s e a r c h} 05:00, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I've experienced this a lot, and there is nothing much we can do about it. The best way to avoid this is to wait until the 'edit war' period has ended. Chongkian (talk) 03:14, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Problems with doing two things at the same time

Today while improving the article on the 2010 Chile earthquake I noticed that I cannot do two things at the same time. In two different instances I tried to repair and expand a phrase but I got warned that an edit conflict occurred repeatedly, even while no one edited since I started editing. This happened five times in a row, then I got tired and used two edits instead to do the same thing with no problems.

I think the problem may be that part of the phrase is altered, and at the same time a wikilink is made or changed. For some reason unknown to me, I cannot replace ((aaaa)) with ((bbb|aaaaccc)). While sometimes edit conflicts cannot be avoided, it seems annoying to me that edit conflicts are reported when in fact no one even touched the section you were editing.

Finally, it may be that edits happened elsewhere in the article, but the only difference (as in, the diff that is shown by the edit conflict page) turned out to be my ((bbb|aaaaccc) replacing the ((aaa)).

I am not exactly sure where to go with this problem, as it seems to be a bug in Wikipedia editing itself. Comments or advice anyone? Andreas Willow (talk) 18:39, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Swedes Article

There is a user named Maunus who keeps editing the Swedes article based on his own point of view. He basically keeps adding Finns (the Finnish people) as a related ETHNIC group to the Swedes. This is not fact. They are unrelated ethnically. The Swedes are a Germanic peoples who speak a Germanic language and are genetically related to other Germanic peoples, while the Finns are a Finno-Uralic peoples who speak a Uralic language and are completely unrelated to the Germanic peoples. Can an Admin please do something about this? TheGoodSon 20:14, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

This is a content dispute, and does not go here. Brambleclawx 20:16, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

more advice needed

It would be good if the page had more advice about how to deal with an EC. The usual situation where I hit one is when adding a comment to a discussion page. My old approach was to use the "back" button to return to the edit screen, then copy my new comment to my browser's cut buffer, then reload the talk page, click "edit" again, and then paste my comment to the new window. With the new WP interface that becomes a lot harder, because clicking "back" pops a warning dialogue asking if I really want to leave the edit window without saving the comment. It's possible that I've been doing this the wrong way the whole time, or it could be that some software change to make merging easier could be useful. Any advice? 69.228.170.24 (talk) 18:39, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

A week ago I asked the Wik team to fix a slanderous statement on Bachir Attars' biography and a few corrections to Bachirs' and my biography (Cherie Nutting). The scandalous statement was removed and I was told that the Wik editors are volunteers and too busy to help with this. I was told to edit the bios myself. I did this using Bachir Attars' name as my entry seemeed not to work.Bachir was happy for me to do this as he does not write well in English. Neither of us are very good at using the net and so we never enter bios to edit as we feel unable to do this well. I was so pleased to find that I learned how to do this and so edited our bios hoping to help these busy volunteers' as advised by Joe Daley. Soon both Bachir and I were both deleted from the Wik bios. All info added by me was totally true and can be backed up by contracts and actual literature,as well as references sent to the Wik by those who could confirm my edits were true. We have been on the Wik for many years.Suddenly we are deleted for doing no wrong and adding correct information. Rather than delete someone, would it not be better to be sure the edits were false before deleting an honest editor? Is there some bias here? We are all totally confused. We do hope that someone will fix this wrong deletion.I am happy to provide contracts, book refs or anything else needed to validate my very few entries.Most edits I made were typos. Cherie Nutting, manager and photographer for The Master Musicians of Jajouka since 1988. People to contact re refs.

Jeffrey Miller- In Touch...Farrar,Strauss and Giroux - Paul Bowles' book of letters and his bibliographer Rodrigo Rey Rosa (paul Bowles' Estate) Stephen Davis Joel Rubiner Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and Ron Wood and Jane Rose Peter Gabriel David Fricke (RollingStone Magazine) BBC Bernardo Bertolucci David Cronenberg Randam House, Roy Finamore "Yesterdays' Perfume"

Bill Laswell among many others. Adresses can be provided. 

Augusta Palmer and her fathers' articles for Rollingstone "Blues and Chaos" Scribners Sincerely,

Cherie Nutting —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bachir Attar (talk • contribs) 19:53, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

What??

Am not particularly stupid, myself, but I don't quite grasp what this page is about.

Calamitybrook (talk) 06:56, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

the edit conflict is based on me my bad can you overlook it please — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anthonybex (talk • contribs) 21:47, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

mixup

This whole page is written as if Alice is Bob and Bob is Alice. That's funny, but confusing. Listroiderbob (talk · contribs) 12:45, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. Can someone who has more history with this page take a stab at fixing this problem? The four-bullet summary at the top says that Bob's edit has been saved and that Alice is seeing the Edit conflict screen, but then the rest of the story talks about the choices that Bob will need to make. That doesn't make sense. As a newbie to this page, and never having experienced an Edit conflict, I'd rather not be the one to make a wholesale revision to the page. It needs help, though.Jonesey95 (talk) 01:09, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Responding to myself. This problem is isolated to the summary section at the top. Alice and Bob are reversed. If you compare the stable version from 2009-2011 with the current version, you will see that Alice and Bob are reversed in the summary section. There was a goofy edit in mid-2012 that changed these names to Emma and Cody. That edit was reversed correctly, but then on 3 July 2012, User:Cdctmom6712 switched Bob and Alice. This switch was incorrect, and the page has stayed incorrect since then. That change on 3 July 2012 needs to be undone without reverting the rest of the edits since then. I edited the page summary to make this change. Jonesey95 (talk) 01:26, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Check for identical edits?

Sometimes, I accidentally hit the save button twice. This triggers an edit conflict. Is there any way someone could work a check into the 'trigger' that determines wether the edits/servers are identical?

TheUnknownNinjaNN2(Talk,Always willing to discuss this subject) 20:20, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 24 February 2014

The order should be changed from Alice-Bob to Bob-Alice. 166.171.59.24 (talk) 11:23, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Not done: as your request is unclear - the phrase "Alice-Bob" does not appear on the page, so it cannot be changed.
If you want to suggest a change, please request this in the form "Please replace XXX with YYY" or "Please add ZZZ between PPP and QQQ. - Arjayay (talk) 11:50, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

See the section I wrote above. Bob and Alice were reversed in at least one of the sections, and I believe that I fixed it in January 2013. If you see a problem with a specific sentence or section, please explain your confusion here. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:11, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

For no apparent reason, and without discussion here, Bob and Alice have been switched. Because of the complex nature of this article, a couple of he/she pronouns were missed, and in at least one location, Bob and Alice were not switched when they should have been. I believe I have fixed those errors.

Discussion on this Talk page is strongly encouraged before further changes to this page are made. There is a history of unexplained and unnecessary edits on this page. The topic is confusing enough without us well-meaning editors making the situation worse. Not to mention that Carol and Ted are getting a little jealous. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:32, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 13 March 2014

ziad jreij

Ziad jreij (talk) 17:17, 13 March 2014 (UTC) [[Image:lebanon beirut mansourieh bedran

{{cite web | title = my life | publisher = mr.jreij | url = http://www.davros.org/rail/culg/northern.html#layout | accessdate =

I Ziad jreij wich my uncle as i haven't in february 11,2000 and i live in lebanon"beirut inthe same building with my cousin. my mom have 3 brother who loves me but i like the most is 3 mr.bechara because he introduced me to the christian life and i love them because he talk to me about the christian life and the bible and the life and sice this second i discovered that life is not a one-time for the one believes in jesus christ,life twice on the ground and in the jana and i prefer that the peoples think like me

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 17:24, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

User script to automatically resolve edit conflicts

I made a hacky user script that adds a button to edit conflict screens to try to automatically resolve edit conflicts. I would be interested to know if its useful to people. To try it, add to Special:MyPage/common.js the following:

importScriptURI('https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Bawolff/EditConflictAutoMerge.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript');

Thanks, Bawolff (talk) 05:51, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Mistakes in the Mistakes section

In the Mistakes section, it started with Alice experiencing the edit conflict and merges her major improvement into Bob's version, however she accidentally overwrites one of Bob's minor improvements. The second paragraph said that when Bob sees Alice's version with his improvement left out, he should not revert to his version. However, starting in the third paragraph, it became "what Alice should do", where it should have been Bob, because in this scenario it was Bob that made the minor improvements. Bob can edit Alice's (newer, major) revision and add back his minor improvements. I have made the according changes in the section.--Joshua ^{Talk to me} _{What I've done?} 16:15, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Your changes look right to me. The Bobs and Alices were all correct when I fixed them on 2 January 2013, but people are obsessed with changing this story. The page's history is loaded with useless changes to this complicated tale. See my notes on this Talk page, above.

At this point, it looks like Bob and Alice have completely reversed places since my edit over two years ago. Good cleanup work. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:54, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Template:Edit conflict

I'm not sure if this template is a great invention. One time I had an edit conflict, and when I returned to the page I saw someone else's comment with this template at the beginning, presumably to show me what caused the edit conflict. Fine so far. However, when I wanted to add my comment for the second time, I again face an edit conflict. The reason was that the other editor had removed this template from their comment, possibly to tidy up their comment. So this template can lead to even more edit conflicts. Gap9551 (talk) 19:25, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

"New since v.1.3" is getting old

In the Prevention section, the article includes

New since v.1.3 is CVS-style edit-conflict merging, based on the diff3 utility. This feature will trigger an edit conflict only if users attempt to edit the same few lines.

which is almost unchanged from the first version of this article at 21:59, 24 November 2005, more than 11 years ago:

New since v.1.3 is CVS-style edit conflict merging, based on the diff3 utility. This feature will only trigger an edit conflict if users attempt to edit the same few lines.

• It is not "new" any more.
• It should say what entity is at v.1.3; based on MediaWiki version history, which shows v.1.3 was launched 2004-08-11, I believe that the intent is MediaWiki.
• In my experience, there seems to be a recent change that enables Wikipedia to resolve edit conflicts it could not resolve before; I recall edits over the past few years where it seemed that Wikipedia could not automatically sort out my changes in one part of an article and insert them into the latest version even if nobody had edited near my changes, but in the past day, I am able to edit an article making numerous changes, and as long as nobody has edited "too close" to my edits, my edits are sorted into the latest version. It would be helpful if there were an article explaining any progress on Wikipedia's automatic conflict resolution technology, and this article should link to it. —Anomalocaris (talk) 22:19, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

It refers to MediaWiki 1.3 as you say. The quote actually originates from 13 June 2004 [1] before the official release of version 1.3. mw:Release notes gives 2004-05-22 as its branch date. It's so long ago that I don't think there is reason to give version number or time in Wikipedia's documentation. I have removed it.[2] MediaWiki documentation at meta:Help:Edit conflict may be another matter where old history is more relevant. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:24, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Conflict with other editors?

We need a link to resolving conflicts with other editors right here. If I find references, I will add them here.--Dthomsen8 (talk) 19:54, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

I have a difference of opinion with another editor, and I am a pacifist when an edit war might start, so I want help with the situation. Wikipedia:Edit warring and Wikipedia:Dispute resolution may help me and others who come here for help.--Dthomsen8 (talk) 20:03, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

There is already a hatnote at the top of Help:Edit conflict:

This page is about the technical problem where multiple editors try to edit the same page at once, leading to a conflict the software cannot resolve automatically. For editing disagreements between editors, see Wikipedia:Edit warring.

The opening paragraph of Wikipedia:Edit warring links to Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. I don't think the hatnote here should have multiple links for the same alternative meaning. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:28, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Technical Wishes: additional interface for edit conflicts on talk pages

This is what the interface is planned to look like.

To be able to solve edit conflicts on talk pages more effectively, an additional interface for this situation was designed by the Technical Wishes team at Wikimedia Germany.

This view is shown to you when you write on a talk page and another person writes a discussion post in the same line and saves it before you. With this additional editing conflict interface, you can adjust the order of the comments and edit yours. It is planned to be made available within the next two to three months. On the project page the interface is described in more detail.

The Technical Wishes team is looking forward to receiving feedback and questions about this on this discussion page, ideally by March 10, 2020 --For the Technical Wishes Team: Max Klemm (WMDE) (talk) 13:59, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Technical Wishes: an "edit lock" function

I suspect that an edit lock function has been discussed before; I have searched but I have not been able to find such a discussion. (The function might actually already exist, and if so I have not been able to find it.)

To be clear, I am not talking about the sort of locking for the purpose of preventing vandalism and edit warring.

I am talking about something similar to the {{inuse}} template.

The function or template I am suggesting would prevent the editing of an article, or section of an article, while a particular editor is working on it. If it was applied automatically, whenever anyone was editing, this should make the present type of edit conflict impossible.

An alternative would be an automatic application of the inuse template.

If there was an automatic lock, then I think it would be useful if the present Edit buttons/links were supplemented by a View source, in every instance. This could be used by editors who wish to merely examine the source code (to learn how it works for example) without accidentally locking out other editors.

There would have to safeguards to help prevent malicious or accidentally deleterious use of any lock function.

(If I am discussing this in the wrong place, please let me know.)

FrankSier (talk) 10:12, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Technical Wishes: button/link for editing lede without editing whole article

At the moment, as far as I can tell, if one wishes to edit the lede, one has to use the Edit at the top of the article, and I think that this increases the chance of an edit conflict (compared with going into edit mode on just a section of the article).

So I am suggesting an edit link for the just the lede: ie treating the lede the same as any other section, for editing purposes.

(If I am discussing this in the wrong place, please let me know.)

FrankSier (talk) 10:25, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

@FrankSier: There's already an option for this - go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets and search for "Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page". But, yes, if this were the default behaviour rather than something that had to be turned on, there would be fewer edit conflicts. -- John of Reading (talk) 10:41, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

@John of Reading: Thanks. Yes, that is a useful extra [edit] link.

The positioning of the [edit] does not look quite right to me though: if it had not been pointed out to me, I am not sure I would have guessed what it was for (in other words, how it was different from the one for opening the editing for the whole page). I would have expected the link for editing the lead to be immediately above the lead text. The links for editing the sections are immediately after the section titles; this would lead me to expect the link immediately after the article title to be for editing the (whole) article.

Another inconsistency is that the section edit links enable the titles to their left to be edited, but the link to edit the lead does not enable the title to its left to be edited.

On the other hand having this new [edit] at the left margin immediately above the lead would not have a consistent appearance (the other ones are not at the left margin).

Maybe these are the reasons why this [edit] is not shown by default!

Thank you also for drawing my attention to the Preferences, which I have not looked into before.

FrankSier (talk) 17:21, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Reword example

Hello! I'm currently trying to reword the example to be a bit more clear, however I"m not exactly sure how to phrase it in a way that would make sense. My initial attempt (which I didn't save since I couldn't seem to get it to make sense) is as follows: Alice finishes her edits and clicks "Publish changes". The software saves Alice's edits as revision #3, but discovers that #3 is based on revision #1, although the currently published revision (#2) is different than #1.

Here's what it currently reads: Alice finishes her edits and clicks "Publish changes". The software saves Alice's edits as revision #3, but discovers that #3 is based on revision #1, although the currently published revision is #2.

I'm trying to make it clear that the reason there's an edit conflict ins't necessarily because the currently published revision is after the initial version but prior to the edit the user who receives the edit conflict, but because they change the same line (would put that in there but I'm not sure if that would be understandable). Any suggestions? Apologies if this is a bit confusing btw, I'm doing my best to not make it confusing. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 19:37, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

It should already be evident that #2 is different from (not "different than") #1, otherwise it would not have been saved. I do not understand your attempt at an explanation in the last paragraph, so thanks for asking instead of just being bold with this page. I have copy-edited the lead section just a bit in order to make it clearer. Did my changes help? If not, please try to explain your confusion again. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:42, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Yep that definitely helps make it clearer! Thanks, that was kinda what I was going for. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 23:56, 20 January 2023 (UTC)