Collaborative Text Analysis
Reflections and Models
This whitepaper is a reflection on what a text analysis environment for collaborative or collective work might look like. It comes out of discussions between Geoffrey Rockwell, Stéfan Sinclair and James Chartrand.
Needs
What would be the purpose of a collaborative text analysis environment?
- Training: To allow experienced text analysts to remotely train others.
- Group Work: To allow a group to collaborate on the analysis of a text or texts.
- Play: To allow a group to play with a text keeping track of results.
Models
Some of the models we can imagine are:
Groupware for TA
An environment with a shared and live workspace where two people can analyze a text online.
Collective TA
An environment where people can post a text, run analysis on it, save results as comments on the text, and include others in the process. This would be a
YouTube?, social networking model of TA. Users could post more than one text, each posted text would get a page like a Flickr image page. The user or others could then add "comments" which could include results from analysis. In effect each page would look like a
TAPoR research log.
Rebecca Game
An environment designed to support the
Rebecca game. (See also the
proposed rules. It would support groups who are working on a text. Each transformation of the text would be kept as a version along with the transforming code.
An enhanced version of the
TAPoR portal that supported group projects. This would be a super-account which the owner can invite others to join. Project members would have different permissions. They could add texts, run analysis and save results. There might be multiple research logs associated with the project.
Editing and Annotation System
An environment where users can edit, markup, annotate and analyze one or more texts. The markup and annotations would be stored seperately from the original text in layers that could be then shown or hidden. Analysis could use one or more layers.
Issues
Some of the issues to consider are:
- Is there really a need for collaborative text analysis environments? Do users want to work together live? Or, do they want to work together on projects?
- Would a collective or social network environment be used? Would people post texts and work on them in public?
- What would the interface for a collaborative environment look like?
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GeoffreyRockwell - 20 Dec 2006
