Pair Writing Teams

Considerable success can be achieved in collaboration. Approaches such as WritingInPairs has shown that two resources concentrated on one effort can produce efficiencies and time saving. This approach could be applied to larger efforts. Teams could be formed with the focus of concentrating on the accomplishment of a singular goal.

It is noted that the deletion of a page requires a seconding. It seems unlikely however that the initial creation of a page, or that the refactoring of a page, could be accomplished by PairWritingTeams. The fact is that the team interaction that takes place on all WikiPages is one of collaborative effort exercised in the WikiNow.

Paired collaboration is not the same as serial collaboration. If it is supposed to work for code, why can't it work for text?

Do you have two chairs at your computer and will the collaborator agree with you to spend time at that computer to do this "pair collaboration", or would you do it by email, ftp, p2p, and when finished post it to the wiki? Perhaps you can enlighten us on how you would accomplish this for wiki posts.

How to approach pair writing depends very much on chemistry. With the last fellow I paired with, we found that it worked best to start in serial. One of use would write a first draft, then the other would mark it up, then the author would incorporate the edits (or not). Finally, we would sit together, sharing the keyboard, while we hashed out issues and edits. A wiki might have worked for the initial rounds, but MS Word has a reasonably good annotation facility, which Wiki lacks, even with "last version" compare. -- DaveSmith