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What I need from reviewers is to verify that the technical information is accurate and complete. It didn't take me long to figure out from reviewers' comments what each person's strengths/weaknesses were -- ie. who I could count on to be thorough, and which reviewers I need to double- or triple-check information with, and keep asking: "is there anything else I need to know about this feature?". And like Kathleen, I highlight/add questions to any area that I particularly want/need feedback on, to make sure that I get the feedback I need on content that I am not confident about.
Although I welcome any comments about how the doc is structured, I don't expect reviewers to have the editorial skills for that, because they are people with software engineering backgrounds, not writers. Ditto for catching grammatical clumsiness or typos (especially since with most of the people that I work with, English is not their first language). Ideally I would have another tech writer to do structural reviews/proofread, but since I'm a writing team of one, that's all on me.
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+lynne -dot- wright=kronos -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com <techwr-l-bounces+lynne -dot- wright=kronos -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> On Behalf Of Kathleen MacDowell
Sent: Friday, August 2, 2019 2:49 PM
To: Peter Neilson <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net>
Cc: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Rate editorial review quality
What I finally began doing was to highlight areas I had questions about and specifically pointing them out to the reviewers in the correspondence.in general Iâve found it almost impossible to get feedback otherwise, as theyâre often very busy in addition not wanting to review. Iâd just send a short note saying Iâve highlighted areas I have questions about to help limit your time. If they wanted to look at anything else that was fine.
But, to more directly answer your question, the first cue of a bad review is nitpicking only. There are bound to be writing/word preferences, esp. important for a boss, but it doesnât hurt to check one hasnât boohooed in the interest of efficiency. After that, the fewer comments or more off the wall ones (where it seems that the reviewer just caught a sentence and didnâtât look into it further) there are, the less likely that the review was thorough.
So an important issue is how many good reviews does one need to be relatively sure something meets your criteria for use? What do you do if you donât meet that? Good things to bring up with the boss or the board or whoever.
My question is, what is an editorial review? It sounds to me like its a matter of structure and language rather than content, which requires the previous two, but also needs accuracy and logic, at least in the realm of technical writing. My approach was for technical content where I often had to read between the lines of the information I was given originally, and in many cases the accuracy was vital.
Best
Kathleen
> On Aug 2, 2019, at 8:30 AM, Peter Neilson <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 02 Aug 2019 00:33:38 -0400, Dawson, Ayesha (Nokia - IN/Bangalore) <ayesha -dot- dawson -at- nokia -dot- com> wrote:
>
>> I'm looking for ideas on how I could measure the quality of an editorial review. Not the quality of the content that was reviewed, but the review itself.
>> Any thoughts?
>
> The thought that immediately comes to mind is something that programmers call "bebugging". That's not debugging, removal of bugs, but insertion of them. Slip in some deliberate errors of the kind the editors are expect to find and correct. Some people may consider this technique unethical. Also, it fails to detect problems that were not considered beforehand.
>
> In the larger view, you can look for matching certain objective standards. If, for example, the review is supposed to find major blunders in presentation, such as "incorrect audience" or "missing explanations" but instead focuses solely upon nit-picking the grammar, it ought to be considered a poor review. If you have a sufficiently astute bunch of people to read the reviewed material, they might be able to perform a subjective analysis: "Wow! This is so tremendously better than the original! The editor deserves five stars. *****"
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