Tracking changes in collaborative writing

Systems for collaborative writing have long captured the attention of CSCW researchers, but have only recently come into widespread use. One issue in designing and understanding these systems is awareness of others' actions in a document. On the one hand, making edits and changes visible can improve collaborators' knowledge of who has made edits and what has changed in a document. On the other hand, studies of large scale editing systems such as Wikipedia have suggested that the visibility of certain edits can incite social conflict in groups. In this interview study, we aim to understand how people perceive and consider the potential impacts of their own and others' edits as they write together. Results suggest that edits embody not just changes to a document, but also social messages that have group maintenance implications. Many participants reported that they carefully consider how to make and explain edits so as to minimize social conflict.