True, but at the same time this exact amorphousness and ability to step away from any specific workflow is what made Wave great - in my own subjective opinion.
I agree with the first two paragraph, but when it comes to the personal opinions - I disagree with the third. I did wanted a conversation to spring up in the middle of a document that was originally an email. That was novel, unique and empowering.
However, at the same time, I agree with the objective part that everyone had to invent their unique conventions, and many had struggled with that. I was just lucky that we had it "just for fun" and figuring out the ways we can use it was a rewarding experiment, not a struggle.
I feel similarly that there was a benefit and opportunity to the amorphousness of it.
At the time I was experimenting with a roleplaying game bot, and felt there was a lot of really interesting colloborative storytelling possibilities in the flows you could have. Start an action as an "email" to your GM, add a bot roll (or equivalent; the RPG I was using at the time was diceless) in the middle of it. Flow that into a threaded conversation about the results/consequences of the roll with your GM (and possibly other interested players), then use that conversation to clean everything up into an edited final "document" of that turn/action.
There's probably a lot of missed opportunity from Google having canceled Wave so soon after opening it to the public. There was a feeling, right up until Wave shutdown that a lot of people were in the middle of interesting explorations of collaboration forms, many of which we are unlikely to again see such a large scale experiment in.
I agree with the first two paragraph, but when it comes to the personal opinions - I disagree with the third. I did wanted a conversation to spring up in the middle of a document that was originally an email. That was novel, unique and empowering.
However, at the same time, I agree with the objective part that everyone had to invent their unique conventions, and many had struggled with that. I was just lucky that we had it "just for fun" and figuring out the ways we can use it was a rewarding experiment, not a struggle.