"Switch to Draft" makes it too easy to unintendedly unpublish a post

[webmatros]

It's way too easy to accidentally click "Switch to Draft" on a published post.

The "button" / link is where "Save Draft" has been clicked again and again all throughout the creation of the post. Muscle-memory makes it so easy to accidentally unpublish a post, that way.

I've published two posts using Gutenberg, and have accidentally unpublished both of them. Quite problematic when they've been promoted via social media and/or email.

Either move Switch to Draft somewhere else in the UI, or leave it like it was/is in the current WordPress editor.

Pretty please?

[mtias]

Seems it could just show a confirmation step instead "Are you sure you want to unpublish this post?". cc @jasmussen @karmatosed

[jasmussen]

I agree with that, even a simple js prompt feels like it would address it.

[karmatosed]

+1 here to the confirmation step.

[webmatros]

@mtias Yes, at the very least such a prompt would avoid the majority of mishaps.

Still, I'd rather the feature to change post status wasn't in the same position (as I wrote previously). When tired, and one has been writing all day to hit a deadline, I personally find it a possibility that even such a prompt will be mindlessly clicked "yes/okay" to.

But yes: +1 to such a prompt, as an MVP-solution:)

[jasmussen]

While we can always revisit these things, having used this for a couple of months or so, the position feels fairly natural to me. The thing is, once a post is published the actions you might want to take on it change from when you are just writing a draft. Suddenly the chief action becomes updating the post on one hand, but also switching to draft on the other — say you accidentally published.

It took a while to get used to the location too, but once it was there it started to feel right.

[webmatros]

Of course, one can get accustomed to even the strangest things;-p

How often do you honestly think someone would want to unpublish a post? The flow is illogical. For the same reason a permalink has the "perma" in it: once a post is published, it's generally expected to be online and accessible. Of course, we should be able to unpublish it, should something be terribly wrong with it, or because it's truly obsolete after a few years, but putting the "Switch to Draft" option where it is, up front and center stage, is like a priest handing over the divorce documents right after the groom and bride have kissed: they just committed a conscious action. Likewise: a post is published for a reason, and it's not "to make it a draft again". That's totally backwards.

In other words: it's not a common action, and as such doesn't need to be in plain view (see: deference & depth) once the post has been published.

Especially now that the Publish function finally has an "are you sure" function. The classic editor didn't, which was equally frustrating, just the other way around:
In the classic editor I feared accidentally publishing a post (not good when using f.e. Jetpack's Publicize module) – in Gutenberg that's no longer an issue, but a fear of accidentally unpublishing a post has been introduced.

Why not put it where it (IMO) belongs: In Status & Visibility? Either under Visibility, or, as a "Post Status: Draft/Pending/Published" above "Visibility: Public" ?

At the very least another +1 for the js "are you sure you wanna switch back to draft?" prompt.