The gods must be crazy: a matter of time in collaborative systems

  • Authors:
  • Du Li;Limin Zhou;Richard Muntz

  • Affiliations:
  • University of California, Los Angeles, CA;University of California, Los Angeles, CA;University of California, Los Angeles, CA

  • Venue:
  • ACM SIGGROUP Bulletin
  • Year:
  • 1999

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Abstract

The concept of time in traditional distributed systems has been inherited in the Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) literature. The following assumptions have generally been made: (1) Events are atomic and their durations do not matter. (2) Total ordering of events can be achieved by some mechanical algorithm. (3) The relationship between events is determined solely by time (causal relationship). However, we observe that these assumptions are not appropriate if the goal is to faithfully preserve user intentions in collaborative systems. In particular, we discuss why and how these assumptions should be relaxed or removed in the design of collaborative editing systems.