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Large Scale Collaborative Editing

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the now-this-is-gettign-interesting dept.

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."

6 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. What about other systems like... by CrypticSpawn · · Score: 4, Informative
    Whats the difference from that and these?

    NASA System
    Diracian

  2. interesting by stonebeat.org · · Score: 3, Informative

    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
  3. Re:A serious question... by revividus · · Score: 4, Informative
    I believe that Bruce Eckel wrote Thinking in Java in a sort of middle-ground between 3D17 and your suggestion; that is he wrote it, posted it online, allowed anyone to comment on the text, and wound up incorporating many hundreds of corrections and suggestions into the final text. In a sense, it was something like 3D17, but he was the moderator of the suggestions/corrections that came in. He talks a bit about it here.

    Also, I suppose a /. thread viewed at a threshold of 3 or 4 or higher would qualify as a collaborative commentary on whatever article is being discussed.

    Of course, I realize that neither of these examples are exactly what 3D17 is suggesting, but they share elements.

    --

    philcrissman.com.

  4. Re:A serious question... by dr_canak · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sure,

    but perhaps on a much smaller scale. My dissertation was a constant collaboration between myself, my advisor, and the two research assistants who helped with the project. We used the "Track Changes" component of MS Word which worked pretty well, but was nevertheless kind of clunky.

    And we used the same MS Word "Track Changes" when we put together a couple substantial ($1,000,000+) grant proposals that involved contributions from a variety of researchers that would later go on to form the research team.

    There is no question that in both cases above, the group product was vastly superior to what the key individual could do on their own. "Track Changes" was an adequate solution for our needs, but I would have been/always am happy to try new collaborative tools like this.

    jeff

  5. **YAWN** by terrified · · Score: 4, Informative

    Drupal.

  6. Re:A serious question... by at_18 · · Score: 4, Informative

    has anyone ever seen a document emerge from a collaboration / groupware system better than one produced by a single knowledgable person?

    Check out Wikipedia. It is a wiki encyclopedia, with more than 100,000 articles on lots of subjects. And growing at breakneck speed. A simple look to the Recent Changes page gets my head spinning. Maybe it's not a "document", but maybe it's even better.