JCSCW Vol. 17 (2008)

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  • Journal Article
    Multi-level Editing of Hierarchical Documents
    (Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): Vol. 17, 39783) Ignat*, Claudia-Lavinia; Norrie, Moira C.
    Collaborative editing enables a group of people to edit documents collaboratively over a computer network. Customisation of the collaborative environment to different subcommunities of users at different points in time is an important issue. The model of the document is an important factor in achieving customisation. We have chosen a tree representation encompassing a large class of documents, such as text, XML and graphical documents and here we propose a multi-level editing approach for maintaining consistency over hierarchical-based documents. The multi-level editing approach involves logging edit operations that refer to each node. Keeping operations associated with the tree nodes to which they refer offers support for tracking user activity performed on various units of the document. This facilitates the computation of awareness information and the handling of conflicting changes referring to units of the document. Moreover, increased efficiency is obtained compared to existing approaches that use a linear structure for representing documents. The multi-level editing approach involves the recursive application of any linear merging algorithm over the document structure and we show how the approach was applied for real-time and asynchronous modes of collaboration.
  • Journal Article
    Places: People, Events, Loci – the Relation of Semantic Frames in the Construction of Place
    (Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): Vol. 17, 2008) Harrison, Steve; Tatar, Deborah
  • Journal Article
    Communication Spaces
    (Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): Vol. 17, 2008) Healey, Patrick G. T.; White, Graham; Eshghi, Arash; Reeves, Ahmad J.; Light, Ann
    Concepts of space are fundamental to our understanding of human action and interaction. The common sense concept of uniform, metric, physical space is inadequate for design. It fails to capture features of social norms and practices that can be critical to the success of a technology. The concept of ‘place’ addresses these limitations by taking account of the different ways a space may be understood and used. This paper argues for the importance of a third concept: communication space. Motivated by Heidegger’s discussion of ‘being-with’ this concept addresses differences in interpersonal ‘closeness’ or mutual-involvement that are a constitutive feature of human interaction. We apply the concepts of space, place and communication space to the analysis of a corpus of interactions from an online community, ‘Walford’, which has a rich communicative ecology. A novel measure of sequential integration of conversational turns is proposed as an index of mutal-involvement. We demonstrate systematic differences in mutual-involvement that cannot be accounted for in terms of space or place and conclude that a concept of communication space is needed to address the organisation of human encounters in this community.
  • Journal Article
    Settings for Collaboration: the Role of Place
    (Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): Vol. 17, 39539) Ciolfi, Luigina; Fitzpatrick, Geraldine; Bannon, Liam
  • Journal Article
    A Multi-Versioning Scheme for Intention Preservation in Collaborative Editing Systems*
    (Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): Vol. 17, 2008) Xue, Liyin; Orgun, Mehmet A.; Zhang, Kang
    Although the multi-version approach to consistency maintenance has been widely discussed and implemented in database systems, version control systems, and asynchronous groupware systems, its potential in real-time groupware systems is largely unexplored. Intention preservation is an important aspect of consistency maintenance in real-time collaborative editing systems, where multiple users cooperate with each other by concurrently editing the same document. The multi-version approach is supposed to be able to preserve individual users’ concurrent conflicting intentions. In this article, we propose a new multi-versioning scheme that can preserve not only concurrent conflicting intentions but also contextual intentions while achieving convergence of the document under editing. By extending an existing multi-versioning scheme to a general one that specifies the conditions for convergence, we decouple the discussion of convergence from that of intention preservation. By constraining the general scheme, we arrive at the novel scheme that guarantees to preserve users’ intentions. The correctness of the scheme has been formally verified. The design of an algorithm for consistent version composition and identification has been discussed in detail.
  • Journal Article
    Of Coffee Shops and Parking Lots: Considering Matters of Space and Place in the Use of Public Wi-Fi
    (Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): Vol. 17, 39539) Sanusi, Alena; Palen, Leysia
    Wireless local area networks – or Wi-Fi networks – are proliferating in some societies. Our interest in this exploratory essay is to illustrate how ostensibly free, publicly-accessible Wi-Fi requires users to apply conventional understandings of space and place (particularly commercial spaces and places) as they make sense of some ambiguities about proper use in those places. We show, through an examination of the metaphorical terms used to describe Wi-Fi, how spatial notions are employed in an attempt to define ownership of the signal and rights to its use. We consider how place-behaviors require evaluation of legitimacy of users in public places and of hospitality of Wi-Fi providers. We observe that commercial interests underpin notions of ownership, legitimacy and hospitality of social actors in public places like coffee shops and parking lots. As researchers considering matters of participation in virtual places, we must first have some appreciation for the normative constraints and conventions that govern the commercial public places in which users access “free” Wi-Fi.
  • Journal Article
    Preface to the Special Issue on ‘Consistency Management in Synchronous Collaboration’
    (Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): Vol. 17, 39783) Dewan, Prasun
  • Journal Article
    Geographic ‘Place’ and ‘Community Information’ Preferences
    (Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): Vol. 17, 2008) Jones, Quentin; Grandhi, Sukeshini A.; Karam, Samer; Whittaker, Steve; Zhou, Changqing; Terveen, Loren
    People dynamically structure social interactions and activities at various locations in their environments in specialized types of places such as the office, home, coffee shop, museum and school. They also imbue various locations with personal meaning, creating group ‘hangouts’ and personally meaningful ‘places’. Mobile location-aware community systems can potentially utilize the existence of such ‘places’ to support the management of social information and interaction. However, acting effectively on this potential requires an understanding of how: (1) places and place-types relate to people’s desire for place-related awareness of and communication with others; and (2) what information people are willing to provide about themselves to enable place-related communication and awareness. We present here the findings from two qualitative studies, a survey of 509 individuals in New York, and a study of how mobility traces can be used to find people’s important places in an exploration of these questions. These studies highlight how people value and are willing to routinely provide information such as ratings, comments, event records relevant to a place, and when appropriate their location to enable services. They also suggest how place and place-type data could be used in conjunction with other information regarding people and places so that systems can be deployed that respect users’ P eople-to- P eople-to- P laces data sharing preferences. We conclude with a discussion on how ‘place’ data can best be utilized to enable services when the systems in question are supported by a sophisticated computerized user-community social-geographical model.
  • Journal Article
    Sotto Voce: Facilitating Social Learning in a Historic House
    (Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): Vol. 17, No. 1, 2008) Szymanski, Margaret H.; Aoki, Paul M.; Grinter, Rebecca E.; Hurst, Amy; Thornton, James D.; Woodruff, Allison
    This study examines visitors’ use of two different electronic guidebook prototypes, the second an iteration of the first, that were developed to support social interaction between companions as they tour a historic house. Three studies were conducted in which paired visitors’ social interactions were video- and audio-recorded for analysis. Using conversation analysis, the data from the use of prototype 1 and prototype 2 were compared. It was found that audio delivery methods were consequential to the ways in which visitors structurally organized their social activity. Further, the availability of structural opportunities for social interaction between visitors has implications for the ways in which the learning process occurs in museum settings.
  • Journal Article
    Introduction to Special Issue on Learning and Work
    (Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): Vol. 17, No. 1, 2008) Koschmann, Timothy