The terms collaborative writing and refer to projects where written works are created by multiple people together (collaboratively) rather than individually. Some projects are overseen by an editor or editorial team, but many grow without any of this top-down oversight. Collaboration is a process defined by the recursive interaction of knowledge[1] and mutual learning between two or more people working together[2] toward a common goal typically creative in nature. ... Editing may also refer to audio editing or film editing. ... Top-down and Bottom-up are approaches to the software development process, and by extension to other procedures, mostly involving software. ...

Evolution

This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims. Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the talk page for details.

The following list gives one possible overview of the evolution of computer-based collaborative writing (opinions may vary as to the order, number, and details of the steps). Image File history File links Emblem-important. ...

1. File exchange via removable media (sneakernet) or email
2. File exchange via shared file server
3. Revision control software providing check-in/out
   • List of revision control software
4. Enterprise information portal, Content management system
   • SharePoint
5. Wikis

Removable media are transportable drives or disks that can be moved easily from one computer to another. ... In a non-network environment, the floppy disk was once the primary means of transferring data between computers. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Revision control (also known as version control, source control or (source) code management (SCM)) is the management of multiple revisions of the same unit of information. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Comparison of revision control software. ... -1... A Content Management System (CMS) is a software system used for content management. ... Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... A Wiki or wiki (pronounced wicky, weekee, or veekee; see pronunciation section below) is a website (or other hypertext document collection) that allows users to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also allows anyone to edit the content. ...

Practical approaches

In a true collaborative environment, each contributor has an almost equal ability to add, edit, and remove text. The writing process becomes a recursive task, where each change prompts others to make more changes. It is easier to do if the group has a specific end goal in mind, and harder if a goal is absent or vague. See: Recursion Recursively enumerable language Recursively enumerable set Recursive filter Recursive function Recursive set Primitive recursive function This is a disambiguation page — a list of pages that otherwise might share the same title. ...

A very good method of discussion and communication is essential, especially if disagreements arise.

Successful collaboration occurs when each participate [or stakeholder] is able to make a unique contribution toward achieving a common vision or goal statement. Supporting this common goal are objectives that have been generated by each of the participants. It is important for each participant to "feel" as though he or she has a significant contribution to make to the achievement of goals. It is also important that each participant be held accountable for contributing to the writing project. [Brown, C. A., 2007, East Carolina University]

Examples

Collaborative writing projects include:

• bookhitch Community Book Project:[1]
• Write Open Story
• Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
• Everything2
• H2G2
• International Writing Exchange
• Ilf and Petrov
• Kozma Prutkov
• Linux documentation project
• New Worlds Project
• Nicolas Bourbaki
• Panhistoria
• Scriblist.com
• Fiddler on the Project - http://fiddlerontheproject.bluwiki.com
• Trillium Report
• Wikipedia and many other wikis

Some collaborative writing projects are also open content. ... Everything2, Everything2, or E2 for short, is a collaborative Web-based community consisting of a database of interlinked user-submitted written material. ... H2G2 is also an acronym for the The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. ... Ilf and Petrov Ilya Ilf (Ilya Arnoldovich Faynzilberg, 1897–1937) and Evgeny or Yevgeny Petrov (Yevgeniy Petrovich Kataev or Katayev, 1903–1942) were two Soviet prose authors of the 1920s and 1930s. ... Kozma Prutkov was a psuedonym of Russian author Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy. ... The Linux Documentation Project (TLDP) is an all-volunteer project that maintains a large collection of Linux (and Linux-related) documentation and publishes the collection online. ... It is proposed that this article be deleted, because of the following concern: NN online creative writing project; fails WP:WEB If you can address this concern by improving, copyediting, sourcing, renaming or merging the page, please edit this page and do so. ... Nicolas Bourbaki is the collective allonym under which a group of (mainly French) 20th-century mathematicians wrote a series of books presenting an exposition of modern advanced mathematics, beginning in 1935. ... Scriblist. ... The Trillium Report is a German medical magazine dealing with innovation management in medicine. ... Wikipedia (IPA: , or ( ) is a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization. ... Look up Wiki in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Open content, coined by analogy with open source, (though technically it is actually share-alike) describes any kind of creative work including articles, pictures, audio, and video that is published in a format that explicitly allows the copying of the information. ...

"Collaborative writing is working in a group as small as two or as large as one can imagine to create a document. The group members can work in a synchronous environment (face to face, at the same computer, in the same classroom) or asynchronous (discussion board, email, letters). The group collectively negotiates, coordinates, researches and monitors their writing process to accomplish their task. Often group members will be assigned roles such as monitor, consultant, editor, reporter and leader to streamline the process. They will often follow a schedule of brainstorming, outlining, drafting, reviewing, revising and copy editing to produce the document. This coordinated consensus will produce many benefits. Maximum input, increased learning, varied points of view and fraternization are benefits of this style of work. It is believed this method of writing will produce a higher quality of work as opposed to a single writer/single reviewer method. Collaborative writing is utilized by members of academia, business and government."^{[citation needed]} - Lowry Curtis Lowry, 2004

Similar and related concepts

• coauthoring
• collaborative authorship
• collaborative editing
• collaborative fiction
• collaborative learning
• cooperative writing
• group writing
• joint authoring
• massively distributed collaboration
• recombinant text
• shared document collaboration
• team writing

Collaborative authorship is the act of co-creating and consulting within a group of people to create a project, in which the author of the project is the group itself rather than a single person. ... Collaborative editing is the practice of groups producing works together through individual contributions. ... Collaborative fiction is a form of writing by two or more authors who take it in turns to write a portion of the story. ... Collaborative learning is an umbrella term for a variety of approaches in education that involve joint intellectual effort by students or students and teachers. ... The term massively distributed collaboration was coined by Mitchell Kapor, in a presentation at UC Berkeley on 2005-11-09, to describe an emerging activity of wikis and electronic mailing lists and blogs and other content-creating virtual communities online. ... // Recombinant text is a medium of collaborative design and composition based on an underlying mechanism of population genetics. ...

Further reading

Ashton, Susanna M. Collaborators in Literary America, 1870-1920. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

External links

• Stanford - Collaborative Writing and Research in Higher Education
• Research papers about the collaborative writing process:
  • Analysing interactions during collaborative writing with the computer: an innovative methodology
  • SAC98 - Ceilidh: Collaborative Writing on the Web
  • Building a Taxonomy and Nomenclature of Collaborative Writing to Improve Interdisciplinary Research and Practice]
  • Legal Research 2.0: the Power of a Million Attorneys
• metacollab.net - a collaborative writing project focusing on collaboration.
• Collaboration Made Simple with Bracket Notation
• ublot - A website dedicated to facilitating collaboration of user submitted "blots" which make up a story.
• The collaborative writing playground A little collaborative writing game where everyone can submit and vote for ideas to make up a story. Collaborative writing via democracy.
• OpenEffort.com - Online collaboration tool for creating and publishing content.
• Novlet.com - A web application designed to support collaborative writing of non-linear stories in any language.
• NovelTwists.com - Online collaborative novel written by authors from around the world.
• InformedForex.com - Member-generated news and education community for forex traders.
• Scriblist.com - Collaborative writing site with competitions and guaranteed publication.
• The Wiki Legal Journal, a site set up by members of the Wake Forest Law Review where authors can submit papers for critique in a wiki environment.
• One Million Monkeys Typing A collaborative writing project open to all. Modeled on a mix between "Choose your Own Adventure" and an "Exquisite Corpse" the site allows writers to add to a story in multiple segments.