I was going to write a post about why I thought web office (woffice) was (currently) such a waste of time. But then I thought that nobody would listen to what I was saying so that would be a waste of time! Instead then I'm going to write a short post about collaboration. Join in if you like"¦

One of the reason often given as a benefit for using web based apps is the ability to collaborate on documents. I think this is absolute rubbish!!! More over, this is why.

Collaboration, in this context means two things. Firstly the ability for two or more people to work on the same document and sometimes at the same time. Secondly it means shearing documents with people.

Clearly the second is like replacing a paint brush with a roller, take your pick, e-mail, shared drive, x/cloud-drive, on-line docs, it's horses for course, it's not a solution to a problems, it another option, don't you forget it!

The first point is a bit more interesting. I feel that there are a few reasons why this falls apart. Firstly, and this might be me, but the need for two people to be working on the same document at the same time has been in my experience been never! Second I have always found that anything slightly more complex than a shopping list is best managed by one person that is they keep the master and update that. Lets say that I resize a picture on page 3, while Dave is drawing a picture on page 6, now its not going to look right when I finish. Thirdly, and in the words of the small faces, it all or nothing. On line collaborations USP is that there's just one version of the truth, i.e., you don't have to manage lots of versions of the same document, but this has implicit weaknesses as well, what if you only want some edits, not all of them?
Then there's concurrency issues. It's physically impossible for this type of bi-lateral collaboration to work right. It's like Groove. I'm Sven from Swiss Cottage, your Peter form Torquay. Hello. I log on to our spreadsheet database, at the same time as you, we both update the same cell, but to different numbers, who wins, who fails, who knows? Erlang that's who. What about introducing errors when more than one persons is working on the same document, at the same time think about a set of excel formulas no don't it's to horrible to consider. And lets not talk about actual fraud!

That's enough, I could go on, feel free to do so in the comments. Some of these problems are not, of course, unique to woffice, but it sure doesn't help!

Bar humbug!