Is it a good idea to inform a user with an alert if an automatically saved draft is to be deleted soon?
I'm falling in the don't know camp ... with one foot in the no O:-)
I think in 1.1 the event system will be improved so this is something we could do, however, the auto saving drafts thingy is still sometimes "missing" so you end up from time to time with orphan drafts ... no sure we want to send notifications on all those. There may be a way to know for sure the member selected save draft,
Maybe even a new column in 1.1 that indicates an autosave vs an intentional save ... then we could just have the maintenance clean up the autosave drafts and leave the ones where the member directly clicked save alone.
^^ This would be rather cool!
From time to time I save some drafts, but then forget about them and when I remember they are gone.
It could even be a kind of prelude to scheduled posts. O:-)
In 1.1 Elk distinguish between drafts intentionally saved and drafts saved automatically.
The latter are removed periodically, while the firsts are kept indefinitely.
I feel this should cover most of the situations?
Or is there more to do?
I think that covers it :)
I don't really use draft but I personally don't think it is necessary to keep it in two parts like that, though I can go with that idea as well.
May be enough if auto reminder is generated before scheduled deletion and in the draft page you can select which draft to be extended from being deleted.
Or, since you have two versions of the draft now, you may want to be able to moved permanent to temporary or vice versa so you don't have to delete it personally.
Something like that.
From time to time I do use drafts, and usually (at least in the past) when I saved a draft and needed it, it was usually the case I forgot about it until too late and the draft was gone. xD
Well, yes, it was a long too late. :P
There is a lot of room for improvement (e.g. max number of intentionally saved, reminder of old drafts, separation of autosaved VS saved, etc.), but it's a start.
The moment you have a database field to do something, you can abuse it to do almost anything. O:-)