Re: Dirty trick or fair play (was: RE: Honestly -- when an SME completelyREWRITES your text ... GEEZ!)

["Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>]

I once managed one of several tech pubs groups
in a large company.  The editor was there to support
the writers by reviewing documents for writing errors
making suggestions about organization and other
matters and ensuring the style guide was followed
unless there was a compelling reason to do something
differently, but it was always clear that the ultimate
determination of what went into the final released
document was made by the writer and the project's
engineering and marketing managers.  A short time
after I took the job the company reorg'ed (the first
of what would eventually prove to be a frequent
exercise in making various people walk the plank for
bad decisions they had played no role in making),
and the new "global technical publications manager"
(who was not me) proceeded to turn the editors into
Dolores Umbridge's Inquisitorial Squad.  It was the
beginning of the end.

Moral of the story:  all-peer reviews are a good idea,
if you thought "Lord of the Flies" was a utopian tale.

Gene Kim-Eng


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Downing, David" <DavidDowning -at- users -dot- com>
> Along came my six-month review, and in those days, we had peer 
> reviews,
> rather than manager reviews. She was one of my reviewers, and had made 
> a
> statement something on the order of, "I was shocked by the fact that
> David turned in a draft that was full of spelling and typographical
> errors." She made no reference to the discussion we'd had in which I
> explained why I did that -- thus making it sound like an act of pure
> carelessness, or a complete lack of awareness that the document needed
> to be proofed at some point.

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