Anthony J. BradleyThis sounds like the opening of a joke so I apologize to those who are reading this expecting a laugh or two 
This is actually your chance to help out an analyst, namely, me.
In my recent research on business relevant use cases for social software I have assembled a set of general use case categories (set not yet ready to expose). One of the general use cases involves the movement from single author (or constrained authorship), point-in-time, sequentially constructed, bounded documentation to multi-author (or less constrained authorship), dynamic, simultaneously constructed, long-lived documentation.
To simplify this with a general usage example, the first is me, creating a document, sending it to a few others for co-authorship, using it for a relatively short period of time, and storing it somewhere (in a folder structure maybe) for possible resurrection at some point in the future for a new revision (thus again kicking off the loose “workflow”). Second is us simultaneously creating, expanding, and continuously maintaining documentation for a long lived purpose.
To simplify with a technology example this is a Word document v. a wiki.
Using a “publishing” example this is Encyclopedia Britannica v. Wikipedia.
So here is my challenge where you can help. I need a good name for this use case category. Although, “multi-author (or less constrained authorship), dynamic, simultaneously constructed, long-lived documentation” is quite descriptive, you might agree that it is a bit cumbersome
This is a “call for a better term.” What term do you use (something descriptive rather than wiki or collaborative documentation)?
Category: social solutions Tags: social documentation, wiki
7 responses so far ↓
1 Thomas May 14, 2009 at 6:19 pm
OCPS
Online Collaborative Publication Systems
2 Anthony Bradley May 14, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Not bad.
3 Gina Spadoni May 15, 2009 at 3:36 pm
I would call it “collaborative authorship”…also, tools such as Traction software that are wiki-based content management systems that also have document management features would be an ideal use case (IMHO).
4 Dan Sholler May 26, 2009 at 9:26 pm
You need to distinguish between the mode of creation and the usage pattern. If I understand you correctly, the real distinction between the wiki and the word document cases is that in the latter, there is a publication date, after which the document is assumed to be static. In the former, there is no such date, and the document is assumed to be continuously updated and renewed. I have done similar things before and referred to them as “living documents”, which is a term I have heard used many times before. I would recommend it, as it captures the essence of what you are saying, and is a term some readers may have heard before, but it also seems unnecessarily pejorative toward the published kind of document, which would naturally become “dead”.
Collaborative authorship is a good notion, but that only captures the mode of creation, not this difference in the publication/usage model.
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5 Anthony Bradley May 27, 2009 at 10:36 am
Social Documentation seems to me like a better term than living documents. I think it is critical to capture the simultaneous multi-author aspect. Maybe using “documentation” vs. document can help give it a flavor of “living” vs. static.
6 Virtual Sound May 28, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Multisource describes the state of having multiple contributing authors pretty well: wikis are used to create multisource documents.
Then we can call ourselves “multisourcers” when contributing to wikis, and the purposeful use of a wiki (as an author) is to multisource, you’re multisourcing. I’m multisourcing by commenting on your blog question with a possible answer.
7 Anthony Bradley May 29, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Multisourcer sounds too techie for me. I’m still leaning towards Social Documentation.