=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1914/NHT17-2
|storemode=property
|title=Synchronous Collaborative Text Editing in Wikis
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1914/NHT17-2.pdf
|volume=Vol-1914
|authors=Jessica Rubart
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ht/Rubart17
}}
==Synchronous Collaborative Text Editing in Wikis==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1914/NHT17-2.pdf
Synchronous Collaborative Text Editing in Wikis
Jessica Rubart
OWL University of Applied Sciences
An der Wilhelmshöhe 44, 37671 Höxter
Germany
jessica.rubart@hs-owl.de
ABSTRACT patterns aim at reusing object-oriented design structures,
i.e. descriptions of communicating objects, interfaces, and
Wikis are well-known for supporting collaborative writing.
classes to solve a general object-oriented design problem in
They are focusing on asynchronous collaboration. Today,
a particular context [10]. Both, design patterns and wikis,
synchronous text editing in the web is supported by several
have originally been developed as agile forms of
tools and approaches. However, this possibility is still
technology following a simple reusable system [6]. The
missing in wikis. Based on a prototype implementation,
wiki idea was to provide a website, which allows users to
this paper presents design considerations for a wiki
quickly and easily share, modify, and improve information
integrating synchronous collaborative editing as a special
in a knowledge base collaboratively [15].
kind of hypertext authoring.
Today, wikis are not only used for best practice patterns in
CCS CONCEPTS software engineering, but also for sharing experiences in
• Human-centered computing → Collaborative and several other domains, such as in project management or IT
social computing systems and tools; Wiki; Synchronous service management. Storytelling is, amongst others, a
editors • Human-centered computing → Interaction very important knowledge management instrument
paradigms; Hypertext / hypermedia; collaborative supporting the understanding and sharing of experiences.
interaction The most famous wiki is the online encyclopedia
Wikipedia [6]. It is based on the Wikimedia technology2.
KEYWORDS
There are currently 286 active Wikipedia instances based
Wiki, collaborative editing, synchronous editor, real-time on different languages. In total, there are presently more
editor than 42 million articles [19] and the number is increasing
strongly. However, if multiple users edit the same page at
Reference format: the same time, this causes an edit conflict [20]. The user
J. Rubart. 2017. Synchronous Collaborative Text Editing in
saving the text at a later point in time than others needs to
Wikis. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Narrative and
Hypertext’17, Prague, Czech Republic, July 2017 (NHT’17), 5
merge the changes manually. This can be error-prone.
pages, CEUR-WS.org. Through the versioning of wiki pages, errors can be
resolved later, but this can cause much work.
1 INTRODUCTION Synchronous collaborative editing is a special case, but in
Wikis1 support asynchronous collaborative editing of web the context of edit conflicts it might be very helpful.
pages. The first wiki was invented by Ward Cunningham Today, synchronous text editing in the web is supported by
in 1995 [6][15]. It was called “WikiWikiWeb” as a several tools and approaches. However, this possibility is
substitute for quick web (“wikiwiki” is a Hawaiian word still missing in wikis, even though it can help supporting
for “quick”) [5]. The application scenario was editing and the agile idea of self-organizing teams.
sharing software engineering design patterns. Design
In the following, this paper presents related work, a proof
of concept implementation of a synchronous collaborative
wiki, and first usage feedback. Afterwards, it focuses on
design considerations for such a wiki. The paper ends with
conclusions and future work.
Copyright held by the author(s). 2
https://www.wikimedia.org/
NHT’17, July 2017, Prague, Czech Republic Jessica Rubart
2 RELATED WORK 3 PROOF OF CONCEPT
Hypertext authoring has been worked on in several As a proof of concept, a wiki providing synchronous
directions. In the context of a personal authoring collaborative text editing has been implemented [7]. Figure
environment, NoteCards [13] is an important approach, for 1 shows a screen dump of the current prototype. Articles,
example. In NoteCards, notes are represented as cards i.e. wiki pages, can be selected, edited, newly created, or
holding text and images, and being interconnected with deleted. Presence awareness is provided, i.e. user names
typed links. Fileboxes are a kind of composite notes useful currently editing one and the same article are visualized. In
to organize large collections of notecards. In parallel, addition, editing awareness is provided through the
HyperCard [11] came up as a simpler hypertext authoring visualization of remote cursors.
tool for users of Mac computers. Ward Cunningham was
involved in the development of HyperCard. It influenced 3.1 Implementation
his first wiki project [5]. For integrating synchronous collaborative editing
possibilities, we have used ShareJS. The ShareJS server
In gIBIS [3], hypertext networks based on the Issue-Based uses operational transformations [1] [8], an operation-based
Information System (IBIS) approach can be created synchronization mechanism for real-time collaboration.
asynchronously in a group. IBIS is an argumentation-based ShareJS does not yet support shared cursors so that the
approach focusing on problem solving. Cooperative visualization of remote cursors is implemented in an
hypermedia approaches, such as in [16], focus on application-specific way based on the Ace6 editor.
collaborative structuring – both asynchronously as well as
synchronously with fine-grained notifications of other For this prototype implementation, MeteorJS 7 has been
users’ interactions. In the context of hypertext narrative used as a platform for developing the wiki in JavaScript. In
there is Tinderbox [2], for example. Tinderbox is a tool for addition, it provides hosting and deployment features for
making, analyzing, and sharing notes focusing on spatial testing and evaluating applications. Based on this service,
hypertext, informal semantics, and web collage. Hypertext first users have been able to access the prototype.
notes can be published on the web. MeteorJS is written using NodeJS8 . We have integrated
MongoDB 9 as the database backend. As stated above,
The real-time editors Etherpad3 and Google docs4 support ShareJS is used for synchronous editing. Three editors
web-based synchronous collaborative text editing based on have been integrated: A simple textarea, the Ace editor, and
operational transformations as replication and concurrency CodeMirror 10 . The Ace editor and CodeMirror can be
control mechanism [1]. This shows that the technology for customized with various themes. The input given in the
synchronous collaborative text editing is basically available editor is assumed to be in the markdown 11 format. The
and can be integrated in wikis. Webstrates [4] is a research application converts the given markdown text to HTML.
project and a development platform. It provides a As soon as two or more users edit the same article, they get
Webstrates server that persists and synchronizes changes to synchronized.
the DOM of any page served by the Webstrates server.
Based on this, flexible collaborative hypermedia systems TogetherJS12 is another JavaScript library, which supports
can be built. For synchronous collaborative editing, the collaborative text editing. In addition, it already supports
ShareJS5 library is used. shared cursors and integrates a text chat as well as an audio
chat via WebRCT13. In our prototype, the communication
In [17], patterns for the design of computer-mediated features of TogetherJS have been integrated. While
interaction between humans are described focusing on ShareJS synchronizes JavaScript models, TogetherJS
reusable best practices. One pattern is called “Shared integrates directly through the DOM (Document Object
Editing” and focuses on the provision of an editor, with Model)14.
which users can manipulate shared artifacts simultaneously.
Studies, such as in [18], focus on investigating user
behavior during real-time collaboration. It shows that there
are also differences in cultures. For example, in the context 6
https://github.com/ajaxorg/ace/
of slide sharing, U.S. participants preferred individual 7
https://www.meteor.com/
8
navigation through the slides, while Japanese participants https://nodejs.org/
9
https://www.mongodb.com/
wished there was a moderator. 10
https://codemirror.net/
11
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7763/
3 12
http://etherpad.org/ https://togetherjs.com/
4 13
https://docs.google.com/ https://webrtc.org/
5 14
https://github.com/share/ShareJS/ https://www.w3.org/DOM/
2
Synchronous Collaborative Text Editing in Wikis NHT’17, July 2017, Prague, Czech Republic
3.2 First Usage Feedback distributed in different rooms and were asked to edit
We did a first evaluation with a group of students using several web pages – similar to articles in Wikipedia.
Groupware Observational User Testing [12]. With this Mostly, they have used the chat to communicate and
evaluation method, evaluators observe users performing coordinate themselves. The audio chat did not work
collaborative tasks in a laboratory setting. Problems are properly on all browsers. Communication is very
monitored and users are asked to think aloud about what important in synchronous collaboration settings.
they are doing. In addition, we have asked about feedback
through a final questionnaire. The students were
Figure 1: Proof of Concept Implementation Using ShareJS
As a result, the prototype system basically illustrates the 4 DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS
advantages of integrating synchronous editing in wikis In this section, we will look at and discuss design
using operational transformations. Conflict situations and considerations from two perspectives, which are detailed in
complex merging efforts can be avoided. However, this the following subsections:
first evaluation also identified some drawbacks of our
prototype system: Collaborative writing strategies
For using the communication tool, the users needed to as well as
manage a session by themselves, i.e. to invite the other
Groupware and hypermedia design issues
users whereas the shared editing was coupled
automatically. 4.1 Collaborative Writing Strategies
Not all integrated editors included the visualization of
There are five well-known collaborative writing strategies
remote cursors. The cursors are important awareness
[14].
instruments. Without remote cursors, the users did not
Firstly, a single author might write on behalf of a team. In
know immediately where the others were editing.
this case, from the technical point of view collaborative
Students, who did not know the markdown syntax well,
authoring features can be reduced to sharing the results.
needed a lot of time to search and write according to the
In sequential single writing, the shared document is passed
syntax. For them, the synchronous collaboration helped to
from one author to the next one, after the author has written
learn the language.
her or his part of the document. For this strategy,
In a few cases the response time of the editor was
traditional wikis are already well-suited as edit conflicts
considered slow.
cannot occur.
In parallel writing, authors work on their part of the
document at the same time, respectively. This can be
managed with a traditional wiki assigning each group
3
NHT’17, July 2017, Prague, Czech Republic Jessica Rubart
member a separate starting wiki page. However, if parallel parts of the shared data need to be coupled – the text or the
writing does not mean separate sections, but different roles text and the navigation? Or can this be customized?
in the authoring process, such as author, editor, or reviewer, It is also interesting to think about the integration of
then edit conflicts might occur (dependent on the work WYSIWYG editors as not all authors want to use markup
process). languages.
In reactive writing, a document is created in real-time Finally, are there any privacy concerns that need to be
without substantial preplanning. It is also known as joint considered? Usually, it is important to give users control
writing, consensus writing, or reflective writing. Authors over which information gets shared and what remains
react to each other’s changes or additions, e.g. by creating private.
new sections or changing existing ones. In reactive
writing, a high level of consensus is needed and can be According to Halasz’ seven issues for hypermedia systems
developed. Version control is more complex and [13], versioning is an important feature to maintain and
synchronous collaborative writing is necessary. manipulate a history of changes. Wikis already incorporate
Finally, in mixed mode two or more of the collaborative versioning support. When integrating synchronous
writing strategies are combined so that synchronous collaborative writing, one needs to differentiate versions
collaborative writing can avoid edit conflicts and support necessary for concurrency control from document versions,
consensus. which the authors would like to submit. Here, it might also
be useful to integrate decision support to help authors to
4.3 Groupware and Hypermedia Design Issues decide when to submit a new joint version. Alternatively,
According to well-known Groupware experiences, such as the system could be able to submit sections of a wiki page
in [9], it is important to think about awareness features – separately as new versions.
features that make visible other users and other users’ Regarding collaborative work, Halasz points out that a high
interactions, such as presence awareness and shared degree of concurrent work is important. From the
cursors. Also, in asynchronous collaboration, awareness viewpoint of the collaborative writing strategies, this is the
features are important, e.g. to show which relevant wiki case with reactive writing. In asynchronous collaboration,
pages have been updated since the last login. locking mechanisms shall be fine grained. Synchronous
Another important issue is floor control. Shall authors be collaborative editing capabilities complement this view.
able to write simultaneously or is there a moderator or a
predefined process passing the floor to the different 5 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK
authors? In our proof of concept implementation, we give We have motivated the integration of synchronous
authors, editing the same page at the same time, collaborative editing capabilities in wikis and presented a
simultaneous writing possibilities. In this way, reactive proof of concept implementation. Based on this, we have
writing is possible so that consensus can be built and described first usage feedback and design considerations
editing conflicts can be avoided. for this special kind of hypertext authoring.
Session control is another issue to consider. Do authors Currently, we are exploring further JavaScript libraries for
need to invite others? In our prototype system, all authors, this hypertext authoring purpose to improve the prototype
editing the same page at the same time, are automatically in implementation.
a shared editing session. It could also be useful to ask In our future work, we would like to make a user study
writers, with which writing strategy they would like to among Wikipedia authors to get more feedback and
continue. In this context, a voting mechanism can be requirements regarding synchronous editing in wikis.
helpful. A shared session should also establish a
communication channel automatically.
A joint editing session can either be planned or take place
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