Collaborative editing systems support a group of people editing a document collaboratively over the computer network. People may work simultaneously on the same document, simultaneously on different copies of the document, or at different times on the original or copied document. The document types include text, diagrams, more complicated graphic objects, images, CAD drawings, multimedia, etc..

Issues faced in collaborative editing range from the technical to the social. Many of the technical issues are shared with other distributed systems. These have been addressed in the distributed computing and database literature. These technical solutions have not been entirely satisfactory for computer supported cooperative work because they have not addressed the needs of the people working with the system. For example, traditional database concurrency control methods have not solved the problem of consistency maintenance with respect to the person’s intentions while collaboratively editing a document. Solutions developed for collaborative editing can have broader applicability. Algorithms and techniques (e.g. transformation, multi-versioning, optional locking, group undo) proposed for collaborative editing can also bring new insights into the design of other distributed applications including Internet-based multi-player games, collaborative virtual environments, and mobile computing.

Social issues in collaborative editing range from low level implementation issues to high level questions about how collaborative editing should function. For example, a low level issue could be determining when the actions taken by two people are interfering with each other and when they are cooperating. In this case, a system might prevent, or at least detect, interference but allow cooperation. An intermediate level issue is the extent and timing of sharing of individual work. For example, should there be a private work area to develop portions of the document before sharing or should all actions be immediately visible to all participants? High level questions address when, how and why people work together to develop documents. The impact of organizational roles on the participants in editing is another example of these high level issues.

This workshop builds on the success of similar workshops at Group 99 and CSCW 2000. The Group 99 workshop focused on algorithms and consistency maintenance. The CSCW workshop included more issues of usability and uses of collaborative text editing. An objective for the proposed workshop is to focus on the people developing collaborative documents. This draws on the strengths of the Group 2001 participants to address workflow aspects, social issues of distributed computing and the impact of collaborative editing on organizational processes in addition to the technical issues addressed in earlier workshops.

A wide variety of research areas contribute to collaborative editing including group awareness, concurrency control, social interaction, usability, human factors, organizational impact, and workflow processing as well as areas such as distributed computing. Researchers with experience in designing, implementing, using or evaluating group editors are invited to participate. Discussion of higher level questions about the usefulness and impact of collaborative editors is strongly encouraged.

We invite submissions which address issues related to collaborative editing. Interesting topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Concurrency control and consistency maintenance in group editors
• Usability studies of group editors and human factors
• Social aspects of collaborative editing
• Application of group editing techniques and algorithms in distributed applications
• Organizational and workflow issues associated with collaborative editing

Submit by August 25 for review by the conference early registration deadline (September 1, 2001). Submissions received after August 25 will be reviewed until the workshop space is filled.

Workshop: September 30, 2001

The organizers have experience organizing the two prior collaborative editing workshops.

• Jeffrey D. Campbell, workshop chair

• David Chen

• Clarence (Skip) Ellis

• Du Li

• Matthias Ressel

• Chengzheng Sum