When is URL "locked" in place?

If I start a Wizzley page and don't finish it for a few days, at what point to I "own" the URL?  is it when the page becomes a draft, or not until I publlish? 

That's a great question, Rhonda. I have a few wizzles I'm working on; I never thought if I don't publish quickly I might lose the URL!

Well, tell us your URL, and we can try to steal it. 

It would have to be at time of drafting. Otherwise there is potential for real disasters.

But unlike Squidoo, where the URL is locked as soon as you start building the page, on Wizzley you can change the URL until it is published.

I could see any of the three of us picking the same homeschool URL - purley by accident, but I spend a lot of time on keyword research to pick a URL and then write around it, so I would hate to see a disaster. 

I can't speak with certainty about the technical ongoings when you create a draft. But I just tried to create a new page, attempting to use a URL that I already have used for another draft, and sure enough, I get the message that the URL is already in use.

We can safely assume that URLs are locked for as long as someone has a page or draft with the same URL.

At least, that's how it is right now. We are considering to delete URLs that haven't seen the light of (published) day after an extended period of time, e.g. 3 months or so, to give others a chance to do something useful with it.

Thanks NIghtowl. 

Excellent on both counts, Nightowl!

The assumption is correct: The URL are locked permanently. However, you can always ad a simmple number/id to an existing URL, e.g.:

/hallo-world/

and

/hallo-world-1/

In Google's eyes, that virtually the same. The URL itself doesn't have too much influence on the page after all, despite the rumour exists ;-)