[tussa]

If we want to discuss terminology, I agree I should have said "handling conflicts" instead of just "conflicts".

What you are describing is just the beginning of conflict handling. The consequences for bad handling are dire: data loss. If conflict handling and resolving was easy (hint: it's not), the article would have mentioned it.

[halfcat]

Thank you. Do you see the difficulty in implementing the data structure to handle this? Or in the decision about what to do about it? Or about how to automate resolution?

Let’s take git as an example. If we both push changes to our branch, there’s no problem. We have a git repo with different branches. For a single record, this is even simpler, just an append-only table with a foreign key to the prior state.

If someone reviews a PR and finds a merge conflict, it gets handled. Maybe one wins, both get rejected, or both get accepted (a fork). But there’s no requirement that data be discarded.

But automating it seems impossible in all circumstances since it depends on the human intent.