Wikipedia:Historical archive/Edit lock

This page is about a feature of Wikipedia when it ran UseModWiki. What is an edit lock?

Whenever someone hits Save to commit a change to the Wikipedia, one of the first actions the software will take is locking out other potential editors. You can imagine that Wikipedia must be written to in the inner sanctum where its original incarnation lies. Only one priest is allowed in at any time, so everybody entering must immediately lock the door.

Then it is safe to apply the change. If all goes well, the software removes the lock afterwards, and another edit can take place.

Sometimes, though, the software goofs up, leaving the edit lock in place. (What if a priest dies from old age while in the inner sanctum?) Oops, we've just locked ourselves out!

Fortunately, the edit lock is removed from time to time, automatically. It's also possible to do force an edit lock to clear by clicking here.

Better solutions

What we use is called a global lock, that is everybody is locked out from writing to any page. But what we actually want to avoid is two people scribbling on the same page at the same time, so what about only locking the specific page that is currently written to? Our priests couldn't do that, but we can. It's just not implemented yet.