| IV.2. Impacts on collaboration |
|||||
 | |||||
 | |||||
|
We anticipate that the possibility to set guarantees of existence will influence online collaboration in several ways.
A major effect will concern project managers who will be required to develop a concept dealing with the usage of information created during the communication process even before the project actually starts. Precisely because guaranteed availability is connected with costs, one has to ask questions like How long should some specific piece of information be available?, What should be communicated externally?, What different kinds of information are there (e.g. process, topic, legal information)?.
Even project members will start to reflect on how their contributions should be treated. We have made the experience that these questions are usually discussed during or at the end, in both cases too late, of the project. Due to the possibility to set guarantees of existence, it is necessary to decide how information will be treated at the very beginning of the project.
In addition, project members or authors need to decide for each publication whether it should be possible to delete it or whether the information should be available until a certain point of time. The author indicates to the readers how he or she values the published information, whether he or she wants to dispose freely of the information or issue a guarantee for the content. It is essential to deliberate on the advantage of indicating the value of information via a guarantee of existence and the question whether authority over information should or can be given up. If others are allowed to extend the guarantee of existence authority over the information might be handed over completely. However, it clearly signals how deeply an author is commited to the published information.
Authors can certainly disregard the possibility of assigning guarantees of existence. However, we assume that their articles will be less appreciated as opposed to articles with guarantee of existence.
Then again, it is not possible to provide each piece of information with a guarantee of existence. In the course of project planning a budget is drawn up and a decision is made to which extent guarantees can be set. Both have a direct influence on the limitations of assets of project members.
Readers also benefit from information with guarantee of existence. The fact that a reader can rely on the availability of information, might cause him or her not to store the information. At present, the only possibility and therefore common practice to document important information which is available online is to store it on parallel media (e.g. one's own hard drive, server) or even to print it out. This is the only way to make information which should be included or referenced in an article reliably available. As a result, information is stored several times together with all arising problems such as disk space, data security, copyright etc.
|
|||||
