Main > Everything Else

Need some kind of online peer review

<< < (2/2)

Samstag:
You might try http://www.zohowriter.com/.  I have no experience with it and have no idea if it supports comment tags.  By some coincidence geeks.com just sent me a "tech-tips" newsletter on online project collaboration and they mentioned it as an alternative to google docs.

patrickl:
Yes, there are some logistical issues when you have more reviewers. It does work though.

Usually I do the same thing saint did. The document gets sent around along all the people in the group. Each adds their own comments and changes. Either each reviewer sends the document back to me and I pass it along or the group has a rotation schedule (usually kept in the mail itself)

I have used this both as a reviewer and reviewee (is that a word?) and had no real trouble with it. It's a bit of an issue that it's usually a once over (you don't keep on sending it around for ever), the first reviewer usually has the most work (the next ones usually just go through the changes that are already there) and it can take a long time before the whole round is done (especially if one person in the group is slow)

Another option is to sent it to everyone and merge the documents that come back. You can do this from the menu Tools -> Compare and merge documents. This allows you to merge different edited versions. Problems here would be that people can't see each others suggestions. I've not used this much, but it does work.

But you are right. It's probably time for something better really. Guess the problem is that everyone is used to using Word already.

:edit:  found a site describing a few alternatives and lamenting the fact that people still e-mail Word documents around  :P
What’s So Difficult about Online Document Collaboration?

I checked a few, but they don't really jump out at me as something I'd like to try (I don't want to use IM, I do want to be able to have the final decision, I do want to be able to selectively accept changes)

RayB:
I'm not sure if this suits all the features you need, but for our game development design and architecture, we use BaseCamp:

http://basecamphq.com/

There's a feature called "Writeboards", where you can enter in an article (or your paper) -- you could divide it by chapters for example -- Then the registered users can post comments at the bottom, and then users with special access can edit the entry. When you save your edit the system keeps track of older versions so that you can later review and revert changes.

jbox:
If you don't want to spend money you can always set up a new gmail account for each group and connect to it using GMail Drive Shell which creates a network share out of a gmail account so that everyone can just add comments using the normal DOC way and you wont get multiple versions to keep track of. You can also send email from itself to itself for a pseudo discussion forum.  :cheers:

Multi-user/multi-site collaboration is non-trivial. The reason there is no "standard" solution is because there exists no functionally perfect solution that doesn't have a drawback that annoys someone else.  :-[

shmokes:
I haven't looked at BaseCamp yet.  Using the GMail Drive Shell would be perfect if I could actually get everyone onboard.  Once I start talking about installing software I know exactly the hesitating, response I'll get in a voice layered in uncertainty:  " . . . can't . . . we just email it to each other?" 

That's a great idea, though.  I'll have to keep that in mind.  I kind of forgot about the existence of the Gmail Drive Shell.  I read about it when it first showed up on the scene, but never got around to installing it.  Can it be installed to a thumb drive so it'll map a network drive to the gmail account just by plugging it in?

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page

Go to full version