Allow questions to be saved as drafts prior to posting

gmail has drafts, blogger has drafts, outlook has drafts (connected to remote exchange server I can edit email later), I think youtube has draft like feature where you don't publish something until you're done editing... and it's all in the cloud.

I usually look at stackoverflow at the end of work hours (more then usual), I see question I want to answer, I start typing, but I remember I have to go. I can finish it later at home. So do I save it in gmail drafts, google documents, on exchange server, in notepad then save document on usb drive and then take it home ?

I really can do any of this, but I still think it would be nicer to have drafts for posts, where I want to post.

If needed, make them expire in some amount of time.

to expire item would be good thing, to protect SO database from too many drafts.

Maybe to require certain amount of reputation to be able to make drafts ?

just my thoughts...

We need this feature! I'm not sure why it was deferred, because this seems like a big productivity plus.

As explained in the other answers here, such a feature should be similar in functionality to how Gmail works with drafts - if I'm drafting an email, it auto-saves, and then I can wait before sending it.

When writing a question or an answer, such functionality would have multiple benefits:

• Prevents data loss from crashes - let's say that I'm writing a question and I want to paste in some sample code, so I go into my IDE, with Stack Overflow open in a browser window/tab, and boom! My computer/browser crashes. All the question data I was just writing is lost.
• Switch computers while writing - I often get ideas for questions right before I have to leave somewhere (I have no idea why this is, though). This means that I either have to quickly write my question, thus delaying my trip and affecting the quality of the question. As Gmail allows, I want to be able to start writing a question (or at least write the title and a few lines of notes/ideas), save it, and continue writing it from another location.

If such a feature is implemented, it should apply to both questions and answers. While it would be more useful for questions, the first reason I stated above applies to answers, too. However, questions don't really have a specific time cycle (nothing will change if you don't ask the question right now, but instead, ask it tomorrow), while with answers, the original question and its answers will probably change. Who knows, maybe a great answer will have been accepted already, but the draft feature is still necessary.

On another note, I'm not sure we would need to purge drafts, well, maybe rarely (once every year would eliminate any problems with this), but we can discuss this later.

Such a feature would be awesome. Wouldn't you want your question/answer to be auto-saved while you're writing it?

+1. Often when I am typing up a new question, I come up with possible solutions to the problem, because formulating the question forces me to think about it from a different perspective. In these cases, I wish I could "save" the draft question I typed up so far, to spend some time trying out the solution that I envisioned. So if the idea doesn't work out in the end, I can come back and continue writing up my question.

They say, every solution is obvious if you know how to ask the right questions.

At first glance I was going to say "just copy/paste it to notepad" but your point about sudden crashes and the like makes sense to me enough to vote this up.

I agree. There were times I answered a question, then had it revoked because it "wasn't a question" while I was editing it. Then I had to post another question from scratch.

I totally second this. There is a number of questions I am working on in odd free minutes here and there. It would be great to have the markdown editor available when working on the question.

I definitely need this! Every day I come up with silly meta questions that shouldn't be posted yet, and when Friday rolls around, nothing! It's frustrating!

Actually I'd like a deferred posting option. I know my questions posted at late hours or on weekends aren't going to get answered, and I don't want to keep track of them so I can bump them. Would be nice to make a draft and set it up to automatically post during a weekday.

Whilst you can formulate the question in any editor of your choice (or somewhere like a Google doc if you want machine independence) I think there are two cases in which it would be useful:

• when you have already started typing and temporarily change your mind.
• when SO gives you suggestions for other posts that might answer your question (and you want to follow those up first).

This sort-of exists. You can just delete the question and keep it around, then undelete it.

I'm guessing this request addresses the basic need to write down any questions that spring to mind until you refine them (in your mind), kind of like the "note-to-self voice recorder" gag we see in sitcoms...

What I would like to see is, based on current ability to recognize "possible duplicates" and similar, to analyze the draft questions and assign visible "points" based on validity. The logic is, if your one question gets analyzed for possible duplicates /matches, why not have a whole bunch of "unasked" questions contribute to the algorithm... Then you could have your elimination process graded and get suggestions on what you might (wanted to) ask, and also the ability to add and remove data points (question drafts), influencing the algorithm.

Not really a feature request, more of an idea...

Playing devil's advocate here:

You could compose the question in your editor of choice[*] over a period of time and then copy and paste into SO when it has reached its final glory.

[*] especially one that had autosave.

UPDATE & CLARIFICATION

I'm not saying that the idea was a bad idea - just that there are other existing alternatives. TheTXI and Diago have put forward very good reasons why being able to save drafts on the site would be useful & I agree with them.

There could also be a prompt (like for unaccepted answers) if you've started a draft and not published it after N days.