Actually, I kind of dislike the term deranged perfectionist. It seems to me to be a contradiction in terms. Putting that aside, though, I do wonder about the justification for the policy that people who are under contract with Bookshare can proofread their own submissions. I don't know anything about how one gets such a contract, but I would suppose that they must show some kind of evidence that they are good at what they are doing. However, it seems to me that the same arguments would apply to them that apply to volunteers. Just because one has signed a contract does not mean that they have reached a state of perfection. Even the best proofreader can still miss something that someone else might catch. Even the best submitter has a vested interest in their own work.
_ _ _"Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence." - Richard Dawkins
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rogerbailey81 The Militant: http://www.themilitant.com Pathfinder Press: http://www.pathfinderpress.com Granma International: http://www.granma.cu/ingles/index.html----- Original Message ----- From: "Tim Syfert" <goodproofing2010@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Saturday, August 13, 2011 6:48 AM Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Why?Deranged perfectionist? Who's deranged? You better believe it!! (evil smile).
________________________________ From: Kim Friedman <kimfri11@xxxxxxxxxxx> To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Saturday, August 13, 2011 6:13 AM Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Why? Message Hi, Jamie's right. I remember proofreading a book and running it through thespell-checker before sending it up for approval and was startled to find that I needed to add some spaces to the book or something like that. Due to the Braille display not being recognized, I hadn't been aware of how the line looked based on what I heard. I can see why Bookshare insists on two people overseeing the processing of the file, one to submit and one to proofread. And if you have two deranged perfectionists on a given project, submitter and proofreader, then that
book will be as near perfect as we can make it, barring stupid things liketypographical errors or missing words left out by the publisher. Regards, Kim
Friedman. -----Original Message-----From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jamie Yates, CPhT
Sent: Friday, August 12, 2011 10:08 PM To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Why? It's true that if you scan thebook you have the book to proofread with, but I think, in the beginning, there
were very few sighted volunteers for Bookshare. So a person without sight couldn't really compare it with the print book, right? And then, too,it's always good to have a second pair of eyes (um, or fingers or ears, sorry!)
to look something over. I am in general a pretty careful scanner but I haveseveral times submitted a book that was missing pages and it's my custom to page down through the file counting page numbers to make sure they are all there. I
even once submitted a book that had a chunk of pages twice. It's likewhen you read a book that has errors in the print--your eyes see what they want
to see and not what is really there. So sometimes you don't even see the mistakes. And of course there are scanners (like me) who don't read everyword of what they scan, and there are proofreaders who don't read every word of
what they proof. So two sets of eyes on the job are better than one. -- Jamie in Michigan Currently Reading: Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith See everything I've readthis year at: www.michiganrxtech.com/books.html
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