I get by with a little help from my readers: crowdsourced corrections

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I have always been grateful to readers who, in emails or in the comments below, have pointed out typos, grammatical errors or even factual errors in my blog posts. By taking the time and making the effort to let me know (for nothing more than a thank you) they enable me to make corrections and improve the quality and readability of this blog.

Any comment or news site, whether it understands it (like I hope readers of eaves.ca feel) or not (think most newspapers), is a community. I may write on my blog, but so do many others - through comments and, not infrequently, email I receive. But typos, grammatical mistakes and factual errors are another way I get to have a conversation with readers and by which I hope they get to feel part of this community. It is what I think can help make blogs more fun, engaging, as well as grounded and more humble, than newspaper columns.

This process was revolutionized a little under a year ago when I installed the Goosegrade plugin. This plugin is amazing. It allows any registered Goosegrade user to suggest edits using a fairly slick and simple interface. On the back end, I get to see the original text and the edited text side by side and can simply press an "accept" or "decline" button to implement the edits. This "crowdsourcing" of the editing of my blog has been nothing short of a blessing. I try to blog 4 times a week (an aggressive pace, I feel) and I frequently must blog at late hours (it's 2am right now) and so, I admit, I make mistakes. Sometimes lots of them. This of course makes those who offer corrections that much more important to me.

The really cool thing about Goosegrade is that it allows me to track both how many corrections have been made (I'm in the 100's now), and by who! So I wanted to take this moment to say thank you, and send some link love to those who have made numerous corrections.

People like ndrwclrk, Brenton, Luke and Cedgell who regularly send me typo edits... thank you!

I do, however, want to send a special thank you to Silly Gwailo, who has submitted over 82 edits (patches) to my blog. I'm very, grateful for your help. Thank you so much. You, and everyone who submit edits, have helped make eaves.ca better.

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  • http://twitter.com/tpurves Thomas Purves

    OMG do I (and anyone who has attempted to read my writing over the years would attest) ever need this. Thanks for the tip.

  • http://snarkyoptimist.blogspot.com/ Chelsea

    Thank you for the link love, David. I adore Goosegrade and credit you with discovering it.

    One thing I would like to point out, though, is that you mistakenly linked to my blog twice, instead of linking to Silly Gwailo.

  • http://eaves.ca David Eaves

    Chelsea – your streak continues. Thank you for pointing that out – I've fixed the link.

  • http://topsy.com/tb/tr.im/E8jd Tweets that mention Crowdsourced corrections: a thank you to readers | eaves.ca — Topsy.com

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by David Eaves and Scott Bleackley, Timothy Williams. Timothy Williams said: RT @folkstone: Crowd Sourced copy editing solution: gooseGrade http://tr.im/E8jd http://tr.im/E8im @david_a_eaves #crowdsource #copyedit [...]

  • http://www.ubervu.com/conversations/eaves.ca/2009/11/04/crowdsourced-corrections-a-thank-you-to-readers/ uberVU – social comments

    Social comments and analytics for this post…

    This post was mentioned on Twitter by david_a_eaves: Crowdsourced corrections: a thank you to readers http://bit.ly/Rk1cT...

  • http://www.brentonwalters.blogspot.com/ Brenton

    Thanks for the thanks. What a great tool, especially for those of us that compulsively correct grammar and spelling mistakes, oftentimes only in our heads so as not to appear nitpicky or too focused on form rather than substance.

    Ahem: http://brentonwalters.blogspot.com. Back from an extended absence.

  • http://wirelessnorth.ca WirelessNorth

    OMG do I (and anyone who has attempted to read my writing over the years would attest) ever need this. Thanks for the tip.

  • http://snarkyoptimist.blogspot.com/ Chelsea

    Thank you for the link love, David. I adore Goosegrade and credit you with discovering it.

    One thing I would like to point out, though, is that you mistakenly linked to my blog twice, instead of linking to Silly Gwailo.

  • http://eaves.ca David Eaves

    Chelsea – your streak continues. Thank you for pointing that out – I've fixed the link.

  • http://www.brentonwalters.blogspot.com/ Brenton

    Thanks for the thanks. What a great tool, especially for those of us that compulsively correct grammar and spelling mistakes, oftentimes only in our heads so as not to appear nitpicky or too focused on form rather than substance.

    Ahem: http://brentonwalters.blogspot.com. Back from an extended absence.

  • http://www.goosegrade.com/edit/2325612 RobCottingham sent a spelling edit. | gooseGrade

    [...] cool think about GoosegradeEdit: The really cool thing about GoosegradeStatus: AcceptedReport Abusehttp://eaves.ca/2009/11/04/crowdsourced-corrections-a-thank-you-to-readers/ [...]

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