Greetings.
I just finished typing the first mentoring comment to a solution, with proof reading and nice formatting and all, only to be notified upon submitting that another mentor was faster.
Does the UI for mentors provide visual feedback for this situation that I did not see? If not, would it be possible to do this?
When you click the button to start mentoring, you have a 30 minute “lock” on the exercise. If you’re going to take longer, you may want to “reserve” it with a placeholder comment.
Also, it may sometimes say that it is locked by another mentor when in fact the student has withdrawn the request for mentoring. That is most certainly the case if you get the message before the thirty-minute deadline.
guilty as charged … it took me more than 30 min to find concise words for what I actually wanted to say.
But if there is a time-based reservation, how about puttings something like “this request for mentoring is reserved until HH:MM TZ” near the editor as a reminder?
Note, right below the “Start mentoring” button, there’s a footer which reads:
You have 30 minutes until the session returns to the queue for others to mentor.
But, yes, that doesn’t show a concrete end time. A count down timer or warning might be helpful. Or stress inducing.
yep, there it is. Those who read, do have an advantage 
Still, out of sight is out of mind. So a static reminder close to the editor (not a live countdown) would be appreciated.