Conclusions

Overview

Based on online research, this dissertation seems to be the first to examine the development of a web site in detail, and particularly to use another web site to annotate the first. However, a couple of conditions apply to that statement: the first is that a web site is similar enough to other types of computer software or systems that analyses of those other types of systems are relevant to understanding this one; the second is that it is believed that current Internet search engines have indexed only a minority of the content of the World Wide Web (maybe 25%), so it is not possible to know with certainty if there are other similar discussions available.

This conclusion addresses questions posed in the Introduction about the nature of community participation in technology development projects by:

• summarizing results of the use of the Budget Builder over its first two years,
• describing the power relationships between the major players in the project and analyzing how those relationships affected participation,
• detailing the community participation and user input present in the project,
• presenting technical issues we learned about the system design,
• evaluating the methods used in the research, and
• outlining future work.

Overview | Use of the Budget Builder | Power Relationships | Community Participation |
System Design Issues | Evaluation Of Methods | Next Steps

Contents | Introduction | Background | Methods | Description | Conclusion | References