Invent drafts. Auto save drafts.

To me, it's just barely short of a moral principle that software should never accidentally lose user content. "Crash-protect" is only adequate with a very broad idea of a "crash". On mobile or in a browser tab, the app might get killed at any time to save memory. Am I going to go to Wikipedia on my phone to get some info for what I'm writing in your app, and come back to find a blank text box again? Or if I get distracted in the middle of it and then have to reboot my computer fit an update? These might look like orderly shutdowns, not "crashes".

A manual "save" button would help, with autosave reduced to (as you say) "crash-protect" (although depending on context that could include up to a full undo-redo tree); I'd especially like an ability to see all the changes that I'm proposing, to add some notes about why I'm making the changes, and to handle conflicts semi-manually. If you're thinking this sounds a lot like git, yes.

I'm happy to have my opinions considered, but I would caution against overfitting to them - most people don't seem to like the UX that I like.

Not sure if this would apply to your app, but a common pattern is to display a "draft saved" type autosave message. (Email, for example.)

On our site we implemented a step where you have to re-publish your post. For that exact same reason.