If Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) systems are to be successful, it will be necessary to promote ongoing, continuing activity. Even once a CSCW system gets past the critical mass problem, users must continue to find it useful and usable. Only some CSCW systems will provide the social and technical affordances necessary to promote the social maintenance required for continued use.

In this talk, I will present two inter-related streams of research. The first is social, examining an existing CSCW system (the MIT Zephyr help instance) for its social and technical mechanisms that facilitate continuing use over time. The second is technical, considering how to provide interface mechanisms for indicating social activity. I will also provide an overview of how this research fits into the design of a collaborative help and organizational memory system, Answer Garden 2.