discuss: Proposed: Sampling-Review Mini-Howto
Subject:
Proposed: Sampling-Review Mini-Howto
From:
David Lawyer ####@####.####
Date:
31 May 2008 07:34:45 +0100
Message-Id: <20080531064145.GF2054@davespc>
The situation re this is about the same as for my Author-mini-HOWTO
What do you think of it. I'ts a way to speed up reviews.
David Lawyer
<!doctype linuxdoc system>
<article>
<title>Sampling-Review Mini-Howto
<author>David S. Lawyer <url ####@####.####
<date> v0.0, November 2006
<p>The Linux Documentation Project (LDP) requires that all new documents
(docs) from volunteer authors be reviewed for quality. Normally, a
reviewer will read over the entire document, but this may not be
feasible if there is a shortage of reviewers. So to get new
submissions rapidly published on the LDP websites, we sometimes use
the fast sampling review method. The reviewer just takes some samples
of the writing and if they pass, the document is provisionally
accepted. But a full review at a later date might possibly result in
rejection of the document.
For a sampling review, the reviewer scans over the document and
selects some sections of it to read over. This selection could be at
random, but it may be based on selecting those parts where the
reviewer knows the subject best so that any technical errors will be
easily caught. It's fast to just select the first sample of perhaps
1% of a long doc or say 4% of a short doc and read it over thoroughly.
If needed, check the contents against reference material (printed
books or stuff you trust on the Internet). Then repeat for the second
sample, etc. The samples should be spread out over the doc since an
author may have written one chapter well but neglected others.
After the reviewer has read over say about 10% of the entire doc this
way it's time for a 3-way decision: accept, reject, or continue
sampling some more. If everything looks good and there are almost no
errors, then accept the 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.
When a doc fails a sampling review, some authors have just fixed the
errors found in the sample and resubmitted the doc again. This is not
permitted. The author must carefully rework the whole doc before
resubmitting since the sampling has indicated (with high probability)
that the rest of the document needs a lot of work too.
The reviewer should read over the Author-Mini-Howto so as to know
what we expect of authors. The reviewer should write up a brief
report of the review and send it to the author, with a CC going to the
review coordinator. If there are too many errors, it's OK just to say
in the report that you found additional errors, etc. without giving
all the details.
</article>
