We have a number of "living documents" that are the specification for the project I'm currently working on. It's terrible. There's no easy way to know that changes have been made or what they are. Sure, there's red-lining and history. But it requires me to visually scan the document for changes every day, sometimes ever hour.

Sure emailing a copy isn't ideal, but it does have the advantage of saying "Here is a set of ideas that I've decided is complete" As opposed to "Watch my stream of consciousness and decide whether it's done or in mid-edit and act on it."