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4.2 Social mechanisms in communication and collaboration 123

A more flexible form of coordination is to include a social policy of floor con-
trol. Whenever a user wants to work on a shared document or file, he must initially
request "the floor." If no one else is using the specified section or file at that time,
then he is given the floor. That part of the document or file then becomes locked,
preventing others from having access to it. If other users want access to the file,
they likewise make a request for the floor. The current user is then notified and can
then let the requester know how long the file will be in use. If not acceptable, the
requester can try to negotiate a time for access to the file. This kind of coordination
mechanism, therefore, provides more scope for negotiation between users on how
to collaborate, rather than simply receiving a point-blank "permission denied" re-
sponse from the system when a file is being used by someone else.