ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the kind of peer production processes that have resulted in Wikipedia can also be found in other walks of life, including software development, archiving, academic and commercial research, entertainment, and commerce. Such online spaces could conceivably provide useful contacts for professional collaborations as well as for more informal collaborations that arise out of non-professional interests, as is the case with fan fiction writing for example. In general, a collaborative writing project can involve both periods of close collaboration as well as periods of individual work. In order to support collaboration in writing, these tools must provide detailed commenting and annotation tools for peer review and feedback. In essence, peer production is collaboration between very large, diverse, loosely organized collections of individuals, who are distributed throughout the world and connected by a digital network. Peer production differs from traditional collaboration in the workplace in a number of ways.
