User blog comment:MisterWoodhouse/The future of Chat/@comment-43651715-20200812121002/@comment-26213507-20200812161458

Edits that overlap don't go through; conflicting edits would cause that to fail unless it's just two people waiting each time for the other to respond first. The good thing about chat was that you can speak in real-time and didn't require a loading screen to post, and that more than one person can speak at once (aka conflicting edits were irrelevant).