CHS: Small: Supporting Stigmergic Coordination

该奖项支持理论和工具的开发，以改善分布式团队的协调，例如，地理上分散的个人群体随着时间的推移一起朝着共同的目标工作。分布式工作的分离通常会使团队成员更难以有效地协同工作。然而，当工作产品通过计算机系统共享时，团队参与者可以像看到本地同事一样轻松地看到远程同事制作的工作，并且工作可以提供支持团队协调的信息。具体地说，先前的研究表明，自由/自由开源软件（FLOSS）开发人员使用他们正在开发的软件代码作为协调他们工作的基础，这种现象被称为污名化协调。耻辱感协调可以比通过明确讨论的协调更有效和高效，因此如果可以更广泛地使用它可能会有好处。该项目的目标是研究FLOSS开发人员，以了解污名协调是如何工作的，并开发一个系统，使其能够在其他环境中使用。为了实现这些目标，本研究将分两个阶段进行：首先确定在FLOSS开发团队（作为分布式团队的范例）和类似环境中实现污名协调的社会技术支持，其次，通过实施和评估支持新领域中分布式工作的污名协调的系统来测试新兴的理论理解。这项研究将有几个预期的智力贡献。首先，实证研究应提供证据支持（或可能反对）污名性协调作为一种协调模式在分布式工作。此外，该研究将确定使用污名化可能产生的负面结果。更重要的是，该研究将确定能够使用污名化的社会技术支持。了解这些特性将为设计支持污名化的共享工作系统提供基础。它们还将有助于理解将协调机制从开放内容创建团队转移到其他领域的可能性和限制。这项研究将产生几个更广泛的影响。首先，能够实施一种新的协调模式可能会对在线工作和更普遍的计算机支持工作的开展产生变革。其次，如果对某些潜在群体参与者（尤其是女性）的依赖似乎令人不快，那么该项目可以研究这种情况是如何发生的，并有可能缓解目前在FLOSS开发参与中观察到的巨大性别差距，尤其是在更普遍的在线群体中。要开发的软件系统将作为开源发布，用于未来的研究（从而有助于研究的基础设施），并可能被分布式工作人员使用（从而潜在地造福社会）。

This award supports development of theory and tools to improve the coordination of distributed teams, i.e., groups of geographically-dispersed individuals working together over time towards a common goal. The separation of distributed work generally makes it harder for team members to work together effectively. However, when work products are shared via a computer system, team participants can see the work produced by remote colleagues as easily as from those who are local, and the work can provide information to support team coordination. Specifically, prior research suggests that free/libre open source software (FLOSS) developers use the software code they are developing as a basis for coordinating their work, a phenomenon known as stigmergic coordination. Stigmergic coordination can be more effective and efficient than coordination through explicit discussion, so there could be benefits if it can be used more broadly. The goal of the project is to study FLOSS developers to understand how stigmergic coordination works and to develop a system to enable its use in other settings. To achieve these goals, this study will be done in two phases: first identifying the socio-technical affordance enabling stigmergic coordination in FLOSS development teams (as exemplars of distributed teams) and similar settings, and second, testing the emerging theoretical understanding by implementing and assessing a system to support stigmergic coordination of distributed work in a new domain. The study will have several expected intellectual contributions. First, the empirical study should provide evidence for (or possibly against) stigmergic coordination as a mode of coordination in distributed work. As well, the study will identify possible negative outcomes from the use of stigmergy. More importantly, the study will identify socio-technical affordances that enable the use of stigmergy. Knowing these affordances will provide a basis for designing shared-work systems that support stigmergy. They will also help in understanding the possibilities and limits on the transfer of coordination mechanisms from open content creation teams to other domains. The study will have several broader impacts. First, being able to implement a novel mode of coordination could be transformative for the conduct of online work and computer-supported work more generally. Second, if it seems that reliance on stigmergy is off-putting for certain potential group participants (women in particular), then the project can study how that happens and potentially mitigate the huge gender gap currently observed in FLOSS development participation in particular and in online groups more generally. The software system to be developed will be released as open source for use in future research (thus contributing to the infrastructure for research) and potentially for use by distributed workers (thus potentially benefiting society).