[Bug 468292] [pmi] Confusing cannot save/preview

Bugzilla Link	468292
Status	NEW
Importance	P3 major
Reported	May 26, 2015 06:57 EDT
Modified	Aug 06, 2021 14:55 EDT

Description

After entering information in the project plan, I attempt to preview.

I get a supremely worrying, cannot save message

"The content on this page has either been modified by another user, or you have already submitted modifications using this form. As a result, your changes cannot be saved."

What am I supposed to do? Lose all my work?

Surely this should be impossible because there should be a single writer lockout on the page?

Actually it seems that it is the message that is wrong. Some kind of double save or buffering occurs so the warning is that my changes have already been saved and cannot be resaved.

At any rate Preview should work.

assigned to @cguindon

added bugzilla legacy projects.eclipse.org labels

GRRR! It threw away my work.

(In reply to Ed Willink from comment #1)

GRRR! It threw away my work.

How do I submit a plan_mars.xml these days?

Ed, can you give us a little information about your OS and browser?

Chris, is there anything in the log that might indicate the cause of this?

(In reply to Wayne Beaton from comment #3)

Ed, can you give us a little information about your OS and browser?\

Chris, is there anything in the log that might indicate the cause of this?

This usually happens if 2 users tries to update the same page at the same time or if a user opens up 2 window with the edit form and then save changes into the first window. Afterward, if the user tries to edit content in the second window, you will get that error.

This is a normal drupal error. It tries to protect the user from overwriting changes without knowing.

I was running Firefox on one Windows 8.1 machine, and possibly also viewing with Firefox on another machine.

I had multiple tabs open because in the absence of a copy from existing plan facility, I wanted to cut and paste field by field from the 5.0.0 'edit' to the 6.0.0 'edit'.

I used back and refresh after log-in to workaround the take-me-to-an-irritating-place-after-log-in bug.

Since the '5.0.0' edit showed me very little, I tried to log that tab out.

I suspect that it was the 'edit' of the '5.0.0' that caused the XML plan to be regarded as stale.

(In reply to Christopher Guindon from comment #4)

This is a normal drupal error. It tries to protect the user from overwriting changes without knowing.

Protection is good but only if it cuts in to inhibit useless edits. Deferring the inhibition until save is ---expletive-deleted---

Is this still a problem?

Probably. But I now make much less effort to plan since planning is so painful and seems to have gone out of fashion..

I suspect that the problem falls into the category of idiot user impatient with flaky network and unfamiliar poor ergonomics can dig a deep hole.

I found an issue on drupal.org about this this topic:
https://www.drupal.org/node/394694

It also possible that the "The content on this page has either been modified by another user, or you have already submitted modifications using this form. As a result, your changes cannot be saved." message is shown if the user hits the back to return to the edit form.

This bug hasn't had any activity in quite some time. Maybe the problem got resolved, was a duplicate of something else, or became less pressing for some reason - or maybe it's still relevant but just hasn't been looked at yet.

If you have further information on the current state of the bug, please add it. The information can be, for example, that the problem still occurs, that you still want the feature, that more information is needed, or that the bug is (for whatever reason) no longer relevant.

--
The automated Eclipse Genie.

unassigned @cguindon

added to epic &14 (closed)

removed from epic &14 (closed)

I found the following module that prevents users from editing a node that is currently being edited by someone else.

https://www.drupal.org/project/content_lock

I haven't tested the module but the docs seems pretty straight forward:

https://git.drupalcode.org/project/content_lock#configuration

That being said, this is a pretty old issue and not sure how frequent it is that users stumble into this corner case.

Let me know if it's worth pursuing or not.

/cc @cguindon @wbeaton

I have no way of knowing how often users stumble on this corner case. I'm inclined to believe that this does occur periodically, and we're lucky that it happened to a committer who tends to tell us about these sorts of problems.

If it's relatively easy to implement pessimistic locking, then that feels like something we should do.

I am concerned this may create more inconvenience than added value to our users.

From what I can tell in the database, we average 1 or 2 project update per day:

I am not convinced this is a problem that needs to be solved. Adding locks with this module would require anyone who starts to edit to close the lock. I would be concerned that an admin or editor would accidentally forget to close the lock and make it harder for anyone to edit.

I would vote that we close this as wontfix and reconsider if we get more reports of this.

I agree. Pessimistic locking is not the right solution here.

I agree that the problem is rare and now rarer since IIRC in the old XML project plan days it was necessary to copy and paste from last year to next year. Similar methodology with the PMI encouraged two browser tabs to be open on the PMI; the conflicting users were actually the same user two or more times. Typos or distractions may cause editing indiscipline. Similar can happen with the modern release pages but these are now pretty thin.

I'm going to close this for now. As @cguindon said, we can reconsider later if we're presented with more evidence of a problem.

closed