Republishing diaries is a great feature of DK4 because it allows people to follow topics and it gets extra eyeballs for diaries that might otherwise be overlooked. However!
It needs to be fixed. Presently if you want to republish a diary, there are seven clicks needed to get to "republished" (eight, if you count going back to the diary - which I generally do because republishing usually happens before recommending a diary or reading the comments). Seven clicks! And if you are on a mobile device those clicks skitter around the page and are sloooow.
That's just to republish to one group. Suppose something applies to two or three groups? Then you do all those clicks, all over again.
Here's my proposal for fixing republishing:
1. When you click on the "Republish" button, a radio button list of all the groups you can republish to pops up. You click one or more of the groups.
2. You push a "Republish" button
3. A question pops up: When do you want to republish? with a pull down menu that offers these choices:
If you select IMMEDIATELY, a confirmation dialog asks you, "Do you want to publish IMMEDIATELY?" If you click it the diary is republished to all the groups you chose and you continue reading in the diary.
If you select "At a scheduled date," it takes you to a scheduler which then queues the diary in all the chosen groups.
If you select "At a time to be chosen later" it adds the diary to all those chosen queues and you continue reading in the diary.