Allow users to "petition" for a post lock to be released

[markjaquith]

Our post locking prevents two people from editing the same post, but introduces some awkwardness, in that your options are to wait and hope they exit the post (which slows you down), or boot them out (which could be rude or disruptive), or communicate with them through some other medium (which you might not have). It would be nice if there was a third option... to "raise your hand" about wanting to edit the post. If the editing user is actually working on the post, they could say "not now," or they could "save and release". Or, if there is no response, that could be communicated to the petitioning user, as that could indicate that the editing user has left the post open and abandoned their computer. We could even communicate when the last mouse movement or on-page activity was.

[lukecavanagh]

@markjaquith 

Sounds like a logical addition.

[desrosj]

I think this idea still has merit. There are additional factors that need to be considered today, such as the REST API, the block editor, and backwards compatibility with the Classic Editor.

@adamsilverstein what are your thoughts on this one?

[adamsilverstein]

In general I love the idea of adding this option and can imagine it being useful as an extension of the existing post locking feature. Functionally I anticipate some possible complexity and it might be useful to think through the flows @markjaquith outlined in the description and add some simple mockups of the expected UI.

[mdwolinski]

This issue was discussed in #design today. The general consensus is that this is a low priority issue that will be superseded by multi-user editing.

[ibdz]

In Design triage today, we agreed that it's a good idea to add a stop-gap, but that would probably be improved by overall better co-editing (multi-user editing) features that will be included in Gutenberg at a later time.

So, I have to remove the 'needs-design-feedback'.