Think we agree on case ii). On case iii) I still think that having 1 local and N-1 remote might be useful when we want to prioritize a particular writer over others. Borrowing the sales example from commenter jchrisa, consider a new user sales-head (local rule). He syncs the data uploaded by his sales folks (remote rule) and then goes offline. When he is done editing and comes online, he wants to make sure his delta takes precedence irrespective of any previous changes by sales folks during his being offline. Since he has local rule, his update will just win. Further, he does not want sales guys who were offline and come online after him to overwrite his last update immediately. I am assuming that the sales folks with "remote" rule will see the data with newer server version and accept it.