the d.p. proofing system locks each page to a single proofer. (there's one and only one p1 proofer, p2 proofer, and so on.) so does rfrank's roundless system; once a page has been assigned to a proofer, it's semi-difficult to even look at it. and if someone else has reproofed it _after_ that person, then the old version is stored somewhere i can't figure out, so tracking the diffs simply cannot be done by an outsider. (the d.p. system at least allows you to do that tracking, and even has a routine that will show you round-to-round diffs.) it is by analyzing these round-to-round diffs very closely that you can get a sense for how a page progresses from the initial o.c.r. to its final -- hopefully perfect -- stage... *** the question i have today is whether there is a good reason why a page needs to be assigned-and-locked to one person. is there any reason why you shouldn't allow any proofer to go and proof any page in a book? yes, it would mean that some pages might be proofed several times, but so what? that's not necessarily a _bad_ thing, is it? i'm writing code now to build my own proofing system, and i'm curious about this particular aspect. i think it would be important to inform a proofer how many previous people have proofed each specific page, so as to let that proofer choose whether to do an additional proof, but if they _want_ to do it, is there any reason to disallow it? *** partly this ties into _incentives_... most people like _finding_and_fixing_ errors, so there'll be a good incentive for people to work in the "first" proofing... but even in that first proofing, there are a lot of pages that are _already_ perfect, so there are no errors to find or fix... and in the second and third proofings, the number of errors that are left will be small, even collected over a whole book. so i feel it's very important to reward people for _certifying_ a page -- i.e., confirming that the page is indeed error-free. if i was to put this in terms of a "point" system, it'd be this:
5 points for fixing all of the remaining errors on a page. 4 points for doing the first "certification" of a clean page. 3 point for doing the second "certification" of a page. 2 point for doing the third "certification" of a page. 1 point for fixing _some_ (but not all) errors on a page.
if you certify a page clean, and someone later finds an error, the points turn _negative_. so make sure of your certification! if you gather enough points, you win _a_million_dollars_! ;+) *** there are a few things you need to stipulate for such a system: 1. there is one -- and only one -- "correct" way to do a page. 2. which means there are no ambiguous guidelines in place. 3. and whitespace is significant. 4. which means there are _no_ "insignificant" diffs. 5. all diffs are reviewed, and can be challenged for correctness. 6. so when a page comes out of proofing, that page is _done_. 7. which means "postprocessing" is a largely automatic thing. *** you can discuss any aspect of this post, but what i'm seeking are any arguments people can think of _against_ free-range proofing. -bowerbird