[Air-l] hmm,thinking about internet stories

[Charlie Hendricksen]

Friends,

    The use of the word canon in this thread rang a big bell for me. 
My work involves WWW installations that facilitate research among
distributed teams.  A critical part of the process is the development
of canonical documents about objects and processes in the issue
domain.  Early on it became obvious that a means of criticism was
essential.  To that end I developed (in 1996) a software system
(DocReview) that allows the critics to make critical annotations on
author- or editor-selected chunks of the text, or on the document as a
whole.  This architecture allows each "review segment" to become a
thread in its own right.

    To make a long story short, if "stories" were mounted in DocReview
anyone with some knowledge about the story, then they can add their
observations in a separate commentary file devoted to the review
segment.  From time-to-time, the original author can revise the basic
document to allow another round of commentary.  A reader-accessible
archiving facility retains the past versions with all their
commentary.

    This tool has proven to be valuable for its intended use, and the
empirical studies of the results form an important part of my
dissertation.  There is a demo version that is allows use of every
part of the system except the actual posting of commentary.  

http://students.washington.edu/~veritas/DocReview/review30.cgi?name=DrDemo
-- 
            Charlie Hendricksen   veritas at u.washington.edu

            "Information technology structures human relationships."
                            "Models relate concepts."