March 4, 2008
EP Meta: Chapter Six
Yesterday’s post finished up chapter six (“Character and Author Intelligence”) and today’s begins chapter seven (“Authoring Systems”). As it turns out, number six was another informative chapter, for me, in terms of the blog-based peer review process.
The best thing, undoubtedly, was the opportunity to hear comments from the creators of systems discussed in the chapter: Jeff Orkin and Scott Turner. Of course, many book authors are able to interview system authors when researching a book, but I suspect it’s unusual to get involved in a public conversation (before publication) around the specifics of how the manuscript characterizes the work. I’ve found this very helpful.
At the same time, so far I’ve been frustrated by my own inability to respond fully to the comments on chapter six by Jeff, Scott, and others (e.g., Chris Lewis). I’ve been overwhelmed in recent days, and I’m getting on a plane tonight. So I’m finding that, while it’s great that blog-based peer review is conversational, it’s also problematic during periods when I can’t keep up my end of the conversation.
As before, this might seem an easily-anticipated result of combining peer review and blog commenting, but I feel it more acutely (and hopefully understand it more fully) now that I’m experiencing it myself.
Speaking of time constraints, I’m going to leave aside these meta-musings for now — and hopefully respond to some comments in the next few hours. Meanwhile, if there are any larger comments about the shape of chapter six’s arguments, I’d be happy to have people leave them here.