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Large Scale Collaborative Editing
An anonymous reader writes "3D17.org is a website designed to allow large-scale collaborative document editing. Unlike tools like Wiki, any changes made to a 3D17 document must go-through a moderation-like voting process to see which should be applied to the document. Possible applications include allowing a large community to draft letters, emails, and faxes in a way that everyone can contribute. 3D17 even eats its own dogfood - its FAQ can be user-modified just like any other document."
Wow, what a 31337 name.
/sarcasm
A message from the system administrator: 'I've upped my priority. Now up yours.'
any changes made to a 3D17 document must go-through a moderation-like voting process to see which should be applied to the document. Possible applications include allowing a large community to draft letters, emails, and faxes in a way that everyone can contribute.
Yeah, but those documents will be so boring to read that the letter from any 'large community' will have no effect on the recipient.
Could this be used on /. to fix spelling mistakes and other obvious errors? :)
-- duh
"..even eats its own dogfood."
I have a Cig, but do you have a light?
This ought to be much more useful than wiki and similar systems.
There is neverending abuse of new technology, mainly spammers who innovate to ruin the next up and coming trend (usenet,google,blogs). The one thing these spoilers can't outsmart is people. As long as there is a dedicated community behind these projects, this strategy should not only provide documents everyone can agree on, but trim down the abuse as well.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
NASA System
Diracian
Has anyone tried the open-source collaborative editing/annotation tool called AnnotateIT?
Scroogle
A wiki with Workflow and authentication wrapped around it.
The only thing missing is WebDAV support. With WebDAV support people could collaboratively edit the documents (spreadsheet etc) attached to the webpages.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
But if the spammer makes several accounts on the system they could approve their own changes. Then again they would have to have a few different email addresses to pull this off, and they probabily don't know how to set that up.
LIVE, Love, die
A perfect tool for producing ediocre text.
The owls are not what they seem
wait a minute, who am I talking to anyway? I am the collective Resistance is futile
One that hath name thou can not otter
HTTP ERROR: 500 Internal Server Error
e wdocument
/. anymore.
RequestURI=/Edit/servlet/com.cematics.edit.Main/n
Powered by Jetty://
Its not just for
I have seen a lot of computerized collaboration systems tried over the last 25 years, and I have never seen them produce a better (or even usable) product. Typically the single dedicated person with a quill pen does a better job than 50 people with $$$ of computers. Anyone else have a different experience?
sPh
Why should I trust a "user-modified" FAW?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Incidentally, everything2 "solves" the problem by having a collection of links at the bottom which are scored and sorted by how many times they are visited from the page. This is of course a mistake as totally irrelevant linked pages often have really interesting titles, and if you search from a page then it creates a link. The real solution to this is to have link relevance voting. However that is easiest to implement with browser features which e2 seeks to avoid, like iframes or opening new windows (to report the data, and get the results.) Since pages can talk to each other with jscript you can have an iframe (or again, open a new window) which will send the results, get the new ones, and then use jscript/ecmascript to update the main window.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Way to go dude. I love the way you slipped that spoiler in there. Completely caught me off guard. Of course since I have no plans to go see the movie, it doesn't mean jack to me. :)
Un-news
I don't think this is the first time this concept has appeared in the market [1,2].
Frankly, I'm holding out for something with more public, standard, interoperable interfaces, based on WebDAV.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I'm quite surprised this appeared on /. - its not open source, they're 'investigating commercial possibilties'. So, for all practical purposes, its pretty useless, you might as well stick with wiki. Does the same thing, and you can get it.
Although I can see practical applications for this in most cases im still sold in the idea of the "open" environment of more traditional wikis such as the developing Owiki (a TWiki clone) for me this is still the best option. Since in TWiki and OWiki every version of a page is saved allong with a version number 1.0 1.1 1.2 etc information is rarely ever lost and peer review and pressure from other contributers is _usually_ all it takes to keep the abuse to a minimum. sure you have your flaimers and trolls here and there... but then again, dont we all?
but I must say the 1337sp33k name lowers it a step right off the bat in my opinion.
howabout linux?
;-P
you did say "computerized collaboration systems"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
While I admit is is an early version, it appears pretty clunky. All proposed edits are simply placed in a vote list... this means that votes have to be taken quickly to prevent different useful edits from being unable to merge.
Something more like CVS would be useful, where you can have different edits on different areas going at the same time, and the vote process could merge them together. Then again, perhaps for text that isn't as useful as code. But without such a feature, it's hard to call this "massive" collaborative documents, as the pending change list could easily spiral out of control.
Sig under construction since 1998.
"Okay, here's what we've Got: the Rand Corporation, in conjunction with with the saucer people, under the supervision of reverse vampires, are forcing our parents to go to bed early in a fiendish plot to eliminate the meal of dinner. We're through the looking glass here, people..."
Mod parent up as funny, pretty please...
The Art of Unix Programming
Specifically, rcs systems provide the same functionality, and several allready exist. So why not spend your devlopment time on an interface for Joe Six-pack, rather than re-inventing the wheel.
Especially since we'll probably find out this wheel has a remarkably squarish shape...
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
Well, apart from doing a quick keyword search|justMichael|0 votes
Baah....A document authored by a committee will be ready only just before the deadline no matter what sophisticated tool you use.
Isn't the document being formed on Slashdot in this very discussion a prime example of the benefits of combining the thoughts of many people on an issue? Yes, there may be useless comments in any group discussion, but the sum total of all comments almost always includes some real gems of insight.
Scroogle
Tell me what you think of it
Someone send the URL to the UN! A new world order is born! Anyone could submit amendments to laws!
Seriously, though, other that losing time and getting in endless arguments, my experience tells me that after a certain size, group production of text turns into a mess. Remember those reports that had to be produced in group in high school? One or two individuals ended up doing all the work, while being unncessarly bothered by the rest of the group.
Now, if this 37D-24-36 (oops wrong thread) would incorporate a notion of Karma, maybe we would be closer to a Meritocracy. Per field Karma, to prevent people knowledgeable in one field to pollute another one? Anyone has suggestions?
6E8C 8721 B3D9 5269 5A9B 1122 00C3 C03D 99A7 1CFC
I'm glad to see that Goatsex is in the running for possible inclusion in their FAQ. I've often asked questions that can really only be answered by that damned picture. So many questions.
Anyway, I'd suggest you all register and vote for it. We'll see how long any community based organization will last when it's members choose to elevate horrible horrible smut... will the autonomy of the users be inviolate? Or will it be reduced?
--
RumorsDaily
Obviously you've never actually tried to use Slashdot's search feature to find anything...
You can be fairly certain that whatever it returns is not what you are actually seeking.
There's nothing quick about searching Slashdot.
Blockwars: a free, multiplayer head to head game.
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
Drupal.
And judging from the "additions" to the faq, a little editing may be called for! p
Best Buy can have you arrested
Basically, my view of this project has forever been tainted by simply clicking on the "FAQ" link in this article. I suggest not scrolling down to the picture on the bottom of the page. In fact, I suggest ignoring the whole thing entirely. Obviously, /. (internet?) readers on the whole cannot be trusted to contribute to anything like 3D17 responsibly.
Click the FAQ link.
I think that's the first time a Slashdot story has included a link to goatse.cx.
This space intentionally left blank.
The FAQ's already been Goatse.cx'ed -- be warned.
Are thousands of people actually using this already? Can I see an example of it?
Why not modify WIKI, support of HTML is not an issue seeing that some WIKI engines support it.
Will this ever be ported to as many languages as WIKI has been?
Why is your web site so ugly?
So, someone posted the image of the goatse.cx guy to the FAQ and this passed the voting process?
Great system!
Perhaps it is time for a new type of moderation?
"What the hell is THAT?!?!?!?"
No worries, I'm pretty sure "The Matrix : Reloaded" did that for most people.
then how did someone manage to get a goat sex picture into the 3D17 FAQ?
Anyone else notice the goatse.cx image in the FAQ. Either the FAQ shouldn't be editable (like other documents), or why some people (aka slashdot trolls) shouldn't be allowed to contribute.
--Xandu
Yeah... thanks for the wonderful picture on the FAQ page. Note to anyone at work... don't visit the FAQ page at work!!
On sites such as Everything2, each writer is given copyright ownership (and responsibility) over their own contributions. Editors can modify content, but only do so in unusual circumstances; typically a writeup is either modified by the author or deleted entirely.
So how would a 3D17-type site handle ownership of documents? If anyone can submit modifications to my writings and have them approved, I no longer have exclusive copyright ownership over the final document. Creatively speaking, then, I'm less likely to contribute original writings to a site like this.
Ok, this could very easily backfire when exposed to "Concentrated" (for lack of a better word) groups like slashdot. No longer would you need mirrors because the article is unavailable, you would now need mirrors because the article in unrecognisable in its current form.
It's title is now: "In Soviet Russia your new slashdot overlords welcome YOU!"
and its body reads
Woot! first paragraph! 1: Slashdot article
2. ????
3. Profit
There i've gotten all the jokes out of my system, and still posted something at least vaugely insightful! go me!
!110
p.s. does using "woot" make me sound old and dated like my parents trying to sound "hip" or does it still have some life left?
There are two types of people: those that can fill in the blanks,
I am pretty sick of people blaming spell checkers for their ignorance. A spell checker won't be able to tell the difference between "your" and "you're", just like most stupid people. Hey, instead of relying on spell checers, learn how to spell. Why is this such a hard thing? If you don't know how to spell a particular word, you can look it up. Typos are different, they may happen because of fingering mistakes. Ignorance can be corrected, if you aren't too lazy to put forth a little effort.
In short, learn how to friggin spell. I have always complained about it, but the other day I realized how bad it had become. On MTV I saw another common mistake on the name of a video that was playing. The name of the song was "Harder To Breathe", but it was spelled "Harder To Breath". All the bad spellers out there like to yell "Stop being so anal! Spelling isn't important if you understand the meaning!" Hey, you are the ignorant one, not me. I am surprised at how many people are proud of their stupidity these days.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Put enough (monkeys|slashdot readers) on (typewriters|3D17) and you get (shakespeare|goatse.cx).
Wow. Thank you slashdot.
Semantics is the gravity of abstraction
We developed this website for similar purposes: http://www.democraticwriting.com/
"...a new way of working collaboratively, using a voting system to give every user an equal share in creating a collectively written text"
Offhand, I see this weblication as a good approach for:
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Less is more !
Wow. goatse makes slashdot front page.
All (or nearly all) published books are a collaboration between the author, the author's friends (people the author hands draft texts to), and the editors at the author's publisher. I would bet any writer would tell you that their work benefits from outside input.
I know this is not exactly what you meant but it is an often missed point that name on the front of the book is just the primary instigator and not necessarily the sole person responsible.
3D17 = Edit? Those must be some pretty creative guys.
The answer to all your problems
I would be able to see the forrest, if all these damn trees weren't blocking my view!
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
FYI - I was being sarcastic. I am sure many spammers can do a lot more with email than most of the tech savy people out there.
LIVE, Love, die
"checers"?
You can flame me now. I was the one who inserted the Goatse guy in there, but I did it for a good reason, to proove a point. There are hundreds of trolls reading slashdot, and they all want to get goatse on the front page. Very few have succeeded, but we still try everyday.
But, do NOT post a link to editable page on Slashdot, that is ASKING for a GOATSEing. Thanks, from a troll with over two years experience, who also has a life and a job.
There is a Zope product, called CMFOpenflow, which is now also known as 'Reflow' Activity based workflow with strong integration with Content Management. Reflow is used already for issue tracking and task management, but can be used in many other workflow management cases.
Less is more !
Danger, danger, pot attacking kettle!
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Wiki's seem good, but they miss one important aspect, structure to the documents. Details about plants neetly fall in to a number of catagories Latin/Botanical name, Common name, growing habit, etc. What I'd like to do is take wiki type concept but add more structure to the data. This could help with searching. Also some fields such as height have numeric values and it would be great to search for plants with a specific height.
Anyone come across such ideas or software which could do such a thing?
BTW I'm suprised how down most slashdotters are on colaborative documents. There are some really good colaborative encyclopedia around wikipedia Planet Math. So whats wrong with OpenContent!
There are four sorts of people in the world: fools, lunatics, idiots and morons. - Umberto Eco, Foucaut's pendulum.
Yes. All real hackers favourite programming language is HTML. C is for wimps.
*sigh*
One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they never have to stop and answer the phone.
Is the code open source?
As we are still exploring commercial possibilities with 3D17 we would rather not rule anything out by releasing the code at this time
That's fine and dandy, but I wonder if anybody realizes that even if they don't release the source, that they will immediately face competition from software that is built on the collaboration principle that makes this project work -- Open Source. It seems like that cat's out of the bag now, so it may be a little too late to explore those options at this point.
Computers can help us achieve marvelous things. They can help us organize, process input and schedule other interactions.
For example it was never very exciting to work with somebody across the world. Chess, other work, all had huge mail "lag". Now most of the projects on sf are maintained by authours in different geographical areas. Even linux is!
Yeah, the end product will probably be boring, but that doesn't mean it'll be useless. Think of IETF RFCs, IEEE/ANSI standards, product specs, user manuals (like HOWTOs etc.), and legislation. When was the last time you found anyone of those a page turner?
How long will it be before this funtionality is built into emacs?
eRooms (non-free) allows the collaborative editing of documents. Zope has wikis and webDAV, workflow, email notification, through-the-web editing, but I don't believe it is trivial to allow editing of Microsoft formats. I'm sure there are more examples.
I was wondering what they meant by "Large Scale" until I read the FAQ and saw a pic of the goatse.cx guy. That's a little too large for me, thanks.
I suggested such a system about nine months ago on Slashdot, and I got nicely shot down. It's gratifying to see that there is now more than one system that does exactly what I was after. Hell, for all I know, Drupal probably existed during the time of the discussion.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Large Scale Collaborative Editing sounds a lot like the million monkeys million keyboards idea. I suppose it would work out well if a majority of the people involved were significantly knowledgeable, but otherwise I can't imagine it working too great.
Someone can be honest and wrong at the same time.
A FAQ entry posted by Person A may be erroneous, yet go unchallenged.
On the other hand, a FAQ entry might be completely accurate and still be "edited" by any number of people who, mistakenly, think it's wrong.
Accuracy and correctness aren'tdetermined by popular opinion.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
"Why is this such a hard thing? If you don't know how to spell a particular word, you can look it up."
I can spell pretty well, but I always use the spell checking feature of Word (hey - I'm paid to use it). If I don't make a mistake, then no noticable CPU time is taken, so whats the problem? Look it up? Sometimes it's a type, but leaving spell-checking running is quicker. You look up the word in a dictionary - I've got a job to do.
Where does Drupal support voting on modifications?
Whats the difference from that and these?
NASA System [nasa.gov]
Well, Postdoc is like requiring your shaver to be interfaced to your toaster while the TV is on channel 2 just so the frying pan works so you can make breakfast- but only if you use organic brown eggs. Seriously, did you read the about-Postdoc page and see how literally cobbled together it is? I was personally amazed there wasn't any duct tape mentioned.
Diracian [diracian.com]
It actually works, instead of giving a MySQL error?
Please help metamoderate.
Funnily enough typo is a word I mistype often.
Wiki wins because what moderation it has is post-facto and as easy to undo as the change it reverts. Moderation is also comparatively difficult, requiring one to manually edit the wiki-syntax of the page. So, a culture of responsible editing emerges.
Preemptive, unaccountable, vote based moderation will lead to a groupthink culture like Slashdot can often be, where unpopular ideas get voted into oblivion rather than being challenged with logic.
Think of it as the difference between political and discursive approaches.
I think it's cos `type` is actually a word, whereas `typo` isn't and just looks odd to me!
Drupal has had a book module in the core distribution for atleast a year. In drupal terms, this allows you to author any node (blog entry, forum post, image , story etc.) and attach it in relation to the book. (based on taxonomy). Each of these pages has revision control and can optionally go into the submission queue. It is possible to set it up even more extensively ... whereby you can use the groups module to give certain users different rights depending on which topic they are editing etc.
Some Examples :
Drupal is an incredibly well thought out content management framework that aims to be as extensible as possible. I use drupal to run several of my personal sites , and have been using drupal for more than a year now. The deanspace campaign makes use of it, aswell as several large websites such as kerneltrap and debianplanet
Morals.. isn't that some fancy kind of mushroom
No, we have eople for that! :-p
A little planning goes a long way...
There are many open source (under varying licenses) collaborative systems, each with different principles of operation and rules about what can and can't be done.
/. post, together with the number of posters saying X does this sort of thing, Y does that, Z has been doing this for ages.
What is needed, and this goes back in part to the problem of documentation in the open source/free software arena, is a review of what has been done, advantages, disadvantages, etc. of the various systems. What is also needed is a review of what people want these systems to do. This, together with the requisite organisation to get things done, will allow ideas to be carried from one product to another efficiently, for people to get a quick and clear overview of the state of play in collaborative document systems, and many other things.
There are rather small attempts at this sort of thing on a few of the wiki systems out there, but a comprehensive review of the state of play in collaborative document systems is sorely needed.
If you consider the above unnecessary, observe the interest that was perked up by the
John_Chalisque
Yet you ignore this Typos are different, they may happen because of fingering mistakes.
Modded as funny, revenge of the lazy, dumb kids. Boy, congratulations. You really showed me. But you are still stupid, and the only people who don't notice your stupidity are people who are just as stupid. Everyone else just laughs at you.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I'm not a lazy, dumb kid. I don't make typos; I preview everything at least twice. As far as I'm concerned, a typo and a misspelling are exactly the same thing -- it's a sign of laziness and sloppiness, on the writer's part.
To catch you being lazy and sloppy in a post railing against laziness and sloppiness is hilarious, and I pointed it out and was "rewarded" for it. (I miss the days of numbered karma; I had 41 when it switched to "Excellent.")
Your posts remind me of Grandpa Simpson's picture in the paper, "Angry man yells at cloud." Do you really think you'll change anyone's mind with this vinegar? Honey catches more flies, y'know.
And yes, it's far easier to get a Funny mod than an Insightful or Interesting mod -- which is why /. is fun to read, because moderators give props to good jokes. Instead of boring people with "The pot is calling the kettle black" I modified it to reference Lost in Space as well as an image of physical violence instead of just a verbal attack. Read "Comedy Writing Secrets" for excellent insight into being humorous.
By the way, I like your writing in general (just checked your bio page and remember you from your Simpsons sig), so it's rather unfair of you to lash out personally against me. I never called you stupid or ignorant, merely pointed out some irony. And with that, I'll bid you adieu. Have a wonderful day!
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Yeah, I know. It was yelling at you and more importantly all the people out there who are proud of they're inability to spell the simplest things correctly. (heh - did that one on purpose just to get your hopes up.) :-) Hey, if you can't spell something complex, no big deal, put a (sp?) after it. But to not be able to tell the difference between the easy stuff (their, they're, there, your, you're, etc) is just plain dumb. I am speaking in general here when I say "you", I am not talking to you in particular.
Your posts remind me of Grandpa Simpson's picture in the paper, "Angry man yells at cloud." Do you really think you'll change anyone's mind with this vinegar? Honey catches more flies, y'know.
You know, some days I feel like Grandpa Simpson. :-)
As far as I'm concerned, a typo and a misspelling are exactly the same thing -- it's a sign of laziness and sloppiness, on the writer's part.
Well, I don't really agree. The difference is knowledge. I may know if I have misspelled a word, or done a typo. Everyone makes mistakes. But continuously misspelling the same words over and over in the face of correction is just dumb. Someone types "your" instead of "you're", I might point it out. At that point, instead of saying "Yeah, I get those mixed up", they usually lash out and make rude comments. I just get so sick of how things like this are acceptable. With the internet being the way it is, your inadequacies are much more pronounced for everyone else to see. (and yes, I had to look that one up to be sure). There is just this apathy for correctness, and it just gets to me. What is wrong with being correct? Is it cool to be stupid, and am I just an old man yelling at a cloud? Well dagnabbit, so be it then.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Perhaps put it in a different color, so the above "your" would be "you're" in blue or with a border or different background, so that you could click on it and see the original in all its incorrect glory.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Yeah, but unfortunately there is nobody qualified enough to write the software. :-)
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I don't want to be flooded by "information" created by the "masses". I want to filter away all the rubbish and spend my time dealing with information that's accurate and timely. For that, I need filters -- publishers, editors, moderators, reporters, etc. I'll choose the ones I trust and I'll ignore the others.
A rampant and unjustified cynicism seems to exist that anyone paid to write and publish is, inevitably, biased and corrupted by their desire for money. Conversely, it's asserted that any unpaid and amateur Joe Bloke publishing on the web just for jollies is, inevitably, going to present a less biased and less corrupt view.
Of course, both the cynicism and the assertion are wrong.
Giving (almost) everyone access to the Internet is a great way to increase the amount of noise, but it won't increase the amount of signal.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"