Collaborative Writing through Voting, Recommendation, and Coalition Building

Abstract: Collaboration platforms like Wikipedia and Google Docs are either autocratic (with an owner controlling edits) or anarchic (where anyone can edit freely), but some communities need democratic writing tools that balance inclusivity and quality. We explore methods for structured, participatory document writing, drawing on computational social choice, mechanism design, and NLP. Specifically, we discuss: (1) iterative voting on sentences, and (2) AI-mediated collaboration, resulting in coalitions around compromise sentences; and (3) combinations of these techniques, powered by a recommendation system.