Peer Review vol. 3

The third edition of the peer review saga has been the most successful, thus far. As I stated in my very first peer review blog, that session was mostly-- for me-- about reviewing grammatr, sentence structure, etc. and less about content. The second time around, I was a bit more content-oriented in my reviewing of my peers' work, but frustrated with WetPaint. Our third attempt has been the most fluid because using GoogleDocs is much easier than WetPaint, and everyone seems to be sure about their job description.

This peer review has been the most helpful for me, as a writer, because I get the opinions of three peers. The first review only lent me two other opinions, which were helpful, but the first run is always a little shaky. By this, I mean that people, myself included, were unsure about what to review, and how to review it. The three other people in my group have given greatly descriptive and suggestive advice, not just corrections of comma usage and so forth. For the Style Rule project, I only had one person review my work. While this person gave me some helpful stuff, one person's review is not enough.

Reading other people's blogs is always a fun experience and I should really do it more often. I agree with Jeff's positive review of the threads in WetPaint. I did not like much about reviewing with that site, but I did enjoy the threads. It was a lot easier to read someone's comment at the bottom of the page-- with their name and time of posting there next to it. This business of threads also eliminated much of the in-text commenting that would foul up an essay's format and make it that much more of a task to read when you are the second or third reviewer.

Throughout the process of peer review, I have learned that pretty much everyone in this class takes pride in their writing and wants it to be the best it can possibly be. My classmates-- through their feedback-- have shown an aptitude for nosing out good and bad, that has been helpful in this process.