Type It In Notepad First

If you're about to publish something on Wiki that the world must see, type and save the text in NotePad or another text editor first. Then, if you experience SteppedOnMyEdit, you can resubmit your contribution.

Sometimes, I save the text of the page into the clipboard before I make any changes, especially if it contains something that someone has obviously poured his heart into. I learned to do this after seeing an eloquent submission from AlistairCockburn disappear while I was innocently WikiWalkingAround?.

-- JamesCollins

It's all too easy to do this:

Go to a wiki page
Hit edit
Copy all the text
Paste into my favorite text editor
Do all kinds editing
Copy the text from my editor
(n) Return to the wiki page
(n) Hit edit again
Paste the text into the wiki page, replacing everything that was there before.

This causes the SteppedOnMyEdit problem all over again.

Don't do the steps labeled (n). Leave the wiki page open in the browser as you are editing the text, to create an "atomic edit/refactoring".

Then the software can detect the edit conflict and Do The Right Thing. EditConflictResolution