discuss: Full text of proposed Sampling Review mini-HOWTO
Subject:
Re: [discuss] Full text of proposed Sampling Review mini-HOWTO
From:
David Lawyer ####@####.####
Date:
2 Dec 2006 05:03:43 -0000
Message-Id: <20061202001449.GA5292@davespc>
On Thu, Nov 30, 2006 at 02:37:53PM +0200, Yaroslav Fedevych wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 29, 2006 at 11:05:31PM -0800, David Lawyer wrote:
> > doc for provisional publication. If there are too many errors
> > (including lack of clarity or poor grammar) then the doc is rejected
> > and returned to the author for improvement. But if the situation is
> > somewhere in between these two extremes (accept, reject) then continue
> > with some more sampling until it becomes clear whether or not to
> > accept or reject the doc.
> >
>
> Ehrm, should we allow for literary/stylistic editing done by editors
> when fixes are obvious and eliminate the need to contact the author
> again to get just *those* fixes and explain that no, we cannot accept
> it, as there might be much more inaccuracies blabla ...?
Perhaps this might be OK if the entire doc was being read over by the
editor. But when only a small part of it gets read by the editor, the
author needs to know what is wrong with the parts read over since it's
an indication as to the quality of the rest of the doc. The sampling
editing is just to determine whether or not to accept the doc in it's
current state and will only find a small percentage of the errors in
the doc.
My personal experience with editors modifying what I wrote has been
very negative. Their editing has sometimes changed the meaning of
what I wrote. But on the other hand, I've also had a few typos
corrected by a former LDP coordinator on something I submitted for
publication and that was OK. Getting the author to make the changes
is demonstrating the author that it's the author's responsibly to come
up with a good document. The author learns from mistakes being
pointed out and having to fix them.
> To reduce the time needed to get things straight by the factor of
> two or even three, small and obvious errors must be killed on sight,
> and already-fixed document sent to author for reworking, rethinking,
> whatever.
True, it would be faster if the editor made some minor changes without
letting the author know about them. But I think it's important that
the author be told about them and for this it may not be that much
faster.
David Lawyer
