Collaborative Refinery: A Collaborative Information Workspace for the World Wide WebTechnical Report 97-03David W. McDonaldMark S. AckermanDepartment of Information and Computer ScienceUniversity of California, IrvineThe conceptual framework of a new system, Collaborative Refinery, is motivatedby a scenario involving the creation of an FAQ. The scenario introduces the con-cepts of collecting, culling, organizing and distilling. Distilling is a specializedform of collaborative authoring with support for content selection and genre. TheWeb-based user interface supporting access to the four conceptual functions ispresened in detail. As well, the system architecture and a current implementationare described in detail. Several research directions are discussed with respect toCollaborative Refinery. Collaborative Refinery is related to prior research in per-sonal information management, collaborative authoring, and shared workspaces.A common problem with large information sources, like the World Wide Web (WWW), Usenet news, or even a group memory system, is the difficulty of find useful informa-tion. The sheer volume of information prevents a novice from differentiating between the genuinely useful or interesting items and other less useful information. Summaries, abstracts and hot lists provide a novice instant entry points in a new topic area. The nov-ice information seeker simply looks for these specific entry points like a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), a discussion list digest, or a Web hot list.FAQs, digests and hot lists ease the burden on the information seeker. The burden is shifted to the FAQ or hot list creator. The burden of collecting information sources, orga-nizing items from those sources into coherent topics, and creating a digest often falls on one interested individual or some local expert.The Collaborative Refinery attempts to leverage the collaborative and incremental effort of many participants to create shareable information repositories. The creation of digests, abstracts, indexes, and FAQs represent a significantly different type of collaborative writing that should be studied.The Collaborative Refinery relies on the World Wide Web and the user’s local Web browser to present a shared workspace. The workspace allows collaborative browsing, searching, and modification by each user. Other systems attempt to support effective information sharing through automatic text processing techniques or artificially intelli-gent agents. Collaborative Refinery is an alternative approach that relies on existing human behaviors in collaboration.Collaborative Refinery February 26, 19971