The Split-Merge Paradigm    

This arcticle describes a technique to exchange a large amount of information between people from recognizable subcommunities quickly and efficiently.

Software engineers with a background in high-performance concurrent programming techniques will instantly recognize this as the classic split-compute-merge technique — in which a large set of data is divided into sections, each is worked on using a separate processor (so they can all get done simultaneously) and then the results are merged back together in a coherent and relevant way.