Dev request: 'Entry in use'

In our newsroom, authors email a group of editors when a blog entry is finished, and put "ready" in the title so it shows in Manage Entries.

We're seeing frequent collisions when two editors (and sometimes an author with an afterthought) simultaneously open, then alter, save and publish the same entry, overwriting each other's changes.

We'd pay for development of a plugin that would lock out, notify or otherwise indicate if an author or editor has the entry open. It could be another column in Manage Entries, a warning when someone tries to open an entry already in use, a flashing dashboard message or any other solution that MT would accept. An editor could check a box or perform another action to trigger this behavior if MT needs a manual signal.

Ideas, proposals?

We have looked at Workflow, but even if it did not seem abandoned, it is based on publishinng permissions and an author transferring "ownership" of an entry to a single editor. It's not quite what we need: Everybody in our newsroom has permission to publish, a shifting pool of editors all need to know what needs editing, and the main problem is making sure only one of them can do that at the same time.

We're currently using mt 4.23, but expect eventually to upgrade to mt 5 and beyond.