Need some kind of online peer review

[shmokes]

I'm in a class that is divided in groups of four.  A bunch of work will be assigned to the group, and then that work is divided evenly between members.  Each member is only responsible to each other for doing their part, though.  The work is turned in as a group assignment and graded as a whole. 

I would like to be able to publish Word documents to the web so that other people can critique it and make suggestions.  I stumbled across Google Docs which is awesome and almost what I'm looking for.  With Google Docs I can publish a document and share it with the other members of my group and they have full access to make changes to the document.  There is even a revision history, which really brings it close to what I'm looking for . . . but not quite.

What I want is the ability to insert comments.  I don't want to be able to change any of my classmates' papers.  I just want to be able to insert a comment with a suggestion.  I envision it basically as just showing up as a little colored flag in the text and when you click on it, the flag expands into a bubble with the comment.  And I would want every member of the group to be able to see all the comments left so they can leave comments saying, "No . . . I like it the way it is," or, "I agree that it should be changed, but I think what would REALLY sound better is . . . ".

There is a website called TurnItIn.com that schools are using, primarily because of the system's ability to automatically identifying plagiarism, in which documents can be marked up by a professor in this way.  But it's an incredibly expensive service that is basically only marketed to universities in gigantic bulk-licenses.  I need something much more free-of-charge than that   

Anybody know of such a thing?

[patrickl]

So you don't want to use the "track changes" feature that Word itself has?

I never had any problem using it. I leave comments in other people's papers, suggest changes (which they can then accept or reject or even change upon) You don't really change the document. You set up changes and comments with which the original author than can do with as they please.

But then I don't normally have my work reviewed by 3 people. I guess there are some logistical issues with "track changes" when there are many people reviewing the same document.

[saint]

When I wrote Project Arcade the multiple editors who got their mitts on it all used Word to insert comments and track changes and such.

[shmokes]

The way Word does it is exactly what I'm looking for, except for the not being online thing so that multiple people can all comment on a single copy of the document.  The problem with using Word, in my case, comes down to the way our group works.  Our professor might assign eight cases that must be read and briefed (a formal structure that boils cases down into specific elements like, Statement of Facts, Procedural History, Issue, Holding, Doctrinal Reasoning, Policy Reasoning, etc.).

So the problem with Word is that we aren't on a single internal network.  We have to email our work to each other.  If I brief my two cases and email them to each of the three other members in my group, and each of them make comments and send them back, I am suddenly juggling four different copies each case, and they probably all share the same filename.  Then I need to open them up individually and go through the comments, many of which are likely redundant, and decide which ones to incorporate into the "real" copy.  It's kind of a nightmare.

So unless Word's track changes feature has capabilities that I'm not aware of (it very well may, I've hardly used it), I think it's just not very practical here. 

[saint]

Ah, meh. All my editing was one person at a time having the document then passing it on. 

[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 
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. 

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?