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Question: Should simultaneous edits be made impossible?

Context: This question was originally very poorly typeset. Thus, I made an edit to clean it up. Shortly thereafter, I noticed there was a pending edit. This edit was approved by one user and rejected by myself and another user:

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Since this edit was approved, it is fairly clear that this was a simultaneous edit; otherwise, the new edit would have undone all of my work to clean up the question, and the suggested edit looks substantially worse. The decision by one user to approve the edit was probably not so bad in the original context (because he likely didn't see my edit), but it would have been very unproductive had another user approved the edit, for the question would have essentially been reverted back to its original poorly formatted nature.

Request: I know that further edits cannot be proposed once a user has already given a suggested edit (the suggested edit must be approved or rejected or improved by a $\geq 2000$ rep user), but should it not be impossible for simultaneous edits to avoid situations just like this?

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    $\begingroup$ I think this may be user error more than system error - if your edit had been submitted after theirs, theirs would be automatically rejected, which basically resolves situations like this. So, their edit must have come later (but, presumably, fast enough after yours that they didn't see the "This post has been edited" notification), and a reviewer must have seen the edit, thought it was a standard adding TeX edit (even though it does the opposite), and neglectfully approved it. $\endgroup$
    – Milo Brandt
    Apr 3, 2015 at 2:08
  • $\begingroup$ @Meelo That sounds perfectly plausible. Of course, there is no way to manage neglectful edits. I'm sure the approving user had no ill-intent. It still would be nice to never have simultaneous edits though. There have been occasions where I was in the process of making a substantial edit while an edit had been performed; thus, I quit my edit. I then saw what edit had been made and was disgusted at the work I had lost. If I ever make substantial edits from now on and a simultaneous edit occurs, I simply copy and paste my work somewhere in case the new edit really was not very substantial. $\endgroup$
    – Daniel W. Farlow
    Apr 3, 2015 at 2:15
  • $\begingroup$ meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/19719/… meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/11367/… meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6495/… Please elaborate on how you mean to prevent simultaneous edits. $\endgroup$
    – Najib Idrissi
    Apr 3, 2015 at 7:07

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