atw: Re: Reviewers prioritising feedback




Craig said:
> (By the way, the issue arose because of a reviewer who
> tended to give more feedback about grammar, word
> choice and the like than about content.)

I don't think a rating scheme is the right way to tackle this.
Why inflict extra work on your blameless other reviewers
because you're timid about tackling this one person?

If you get 100 comments back from all the reviews, really,
you know 92 of them will be straightforward. Either you'll
do them now, or do them later, or not do them. No rating
required. For the 8 you're not sure about, talk to the
reviewer: I'm not sure what you mean; Is this correct; How
important is this; what if I changed it to say X.

Fast, accurate, and less work overall than a bogus rating
scheme.

As Bede said:
> Where you need to start is informing your reviewers what you
> want them to review.

Clearly state on a cover page what exactly you want to focus
on in this review. Finish by saying explicitly, "Comments on
grammar, word choice and spelling are also welcome but they
are not the main aim of this review."

If you think it's necessary, reinforce the message when you
give the review copy to your problem reviewer. Point out
tactfully that you have other, cheaper ways to catch text
errors (trained monkeys; unemployed TWs; Arts graduates) and
you really need this person to catch *technical* problems
that only they are likely to notice.

Bede also said:
> As a professional writer, you need to wrest document orthography
> away from technical reviewers -- it's *your* job after all.
> This actually helps your technical reviewers focus on their
> SME role. At the same time of course, you should be quite
> happy to have them point out obvious orthographic (and
> typographic) errors.

And non-obvious ones. If an error is very marginal you might
choose not to fix it, but it's *always* good to know about it.
The important thing is that the reviewers aren't doing this
sort of proofreading at the expense of proper technical review.

---
Stuart Burnfield
Information Developer
Australian Programming Centre

**************************************************
To post a message to austechwriter, send the message to 
austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

To subscribe to austechwriter, send a message to 
austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "subscribe" in the Subject field.

To unsubscribe, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 
"unsubscribe" in the Subject field.

To search the austechwriter archives, go to 
www.freelists.org/archives/austechwriter

To contact the list administrator, send a message to 
austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
**************************************************

Other related posts: