Microsoft
MicrosoftHi Tasmania, would love to understand a bit more as this is something we've been thinking about as well. If a user has made changes to a page, shouldn't they hit Publish to republish so others can view it? Why is users republishing content a problem? Using the discard would only be useful if the changes are going to be abandoned and with the introduction of coauthoring, how it worked would change to accommodate if multiple authors had edited the page. Moving the capability to version history provides users with a detailed list of the changes and who has made the changes.
Republishing content while it has no use definitely is a problem.
If a user has made changes to a page, shouldn't they hit Publish to republish so others can view it? Why is users republishing content a problem?
Reading this explanation leads me to think you miss some crucial information about how people actually work with SharePoint. Not everybody with rights to edit a page knows what they are doing. Or sometimes are in a hurry and miss click on the edit button. Hitting the edit button, on purpose or by accident, would already lead to a page in concept stage. Republishing it would mess with the modified dates, which you wouldn't want to keep a proper timeline of publishing dates, recent info etc.
It also happens that people edit a page to view properties of a web part for example, and want to discard the editing afterwards. Or someone edits the page to create a new concept, but then that person or his boss doesn't want it to be published and wants to keep the original. Again, you then wouldn't want to mess with the original publish date.
Also, getting message about republished pages because of alerts is something you would want to avoid too.
