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When using old-fashioned static-file-based authoring tools,
circulating multiple drafts simultaneously seems like a sign of
incompetence to me, unless you're some kind of editorial genius who
has no problem organizing that kind of chaos.
1. If your tools don't allow you to consolidate comments from multiple
reviewers (e.g. by importing PDF comments from multiple copies into a
single file), require reviewers to comment one at a time, pass it
along, and return the draft to you when all are done.
2. Never circulate a new draft until you're done dealing with the
feedback from the last review cycle.
My content is in a wiki, so the workflow is different. People can
comment at any time, everybody sees everybody else's comments, they
can discuss / argue in context, and I can deal with feedback at my
convenience.
On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 10:07 PM, Erika Yanovich <ERIKA_y -at- rad -dot- com> wrote:
> In the "good old days", tech writers followed the Outline-First draft-Second-draft-Camera ready model. We would submit an entire publication for review (perhaps with some minor TBDs inside) and the world was a simpler place.
>
> What I see nowadays is more dynamic: partial drafts (or bunch of topics) sent to different reviewers at different times. The stages are blurred and the follow-up more complicated.
>
> I know some of you don't believe in complete publications anymore, just in separate topics that get compiled daily (or whenever) into a larger entity, but publications are still alive and kicking out there.
>
> So my questions are:
> 1. Do you also see this transformation?
> 2. If yes, how do you cope with it?
> 3. Should we manage each chunk separately according to the old model (sounds a bit crazy) or replace the old model with a new one?
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