Grand Text Auto

I completely agree with your conclusion here. In response to the many voices that have argued that with blog-based reviewing the essences of an authority is lost, I feel that the authority is not lost at all but rather from where it comes has been shifted. Instead of looking to a handful of academics to correct and improve the work we now can look to the world that actively choses to involved itself with this work. Thus you have intelligent individuals sharing their views, and should those views be incorrect or not as well organized and developed as possible, other commentators will correct them. Or perhaps you as the author can through commenting as well. Therefore as you said, the work improves not through the views of the few who may or may not be 100% correct on their suggestions, but through the views of the many who through the conversation will have a higher percentage of always being the best advice.

But I wonder, is the opposite true? Does such a democratic process prevent true change, since the canon of tradition is always very powerful and influential. But then again perhaps it is naive to think that change occurs through one or two individuals and that in reality those figure heads of change are just that, they represent the larger population that in a traditional sense cannot express itself.

Keep the conversation going,
Huysmans

[...] thought-provoking “meta-post” from Noah Wardrip-Fruin on Grand Text Auto reflecting on the blog-based review of his new book [...]

I think it is a choice, not either or. It is up to whether you need peer review or open public review. I think the age of long tail is ultimately a good thing, but in the short term people will feel pain having to make much more decisions. Don’t we already feel pressure to read more, because there are more interesting blogs that other people seem to read? I think our brain is still in mass production age, where an educated person was expected to know what other educated people know. For a while, tools will help make us more productive. But ultimately, we will give up and define what we follow narrower.

By the way, I am writing a book(?), which will include a chapter on this, at http://paragraphr.com/pages/show/11 (right now it is a mess). And I am actually doing a similar experiment of open feedback. But only one comment so far. That’s probably another challenge for a less known writer.

I agree with your conclusion about the value of networked review. A logical next step is to question the exclusive role that closed peer review plays in academic recognition, and to offer alternatives for the network age. I’ve ranted about the former problem in essays like “Three Threats to the Survival of New Media.”

http://newmedia.umaine.edu/interarchive/three_threats.html

On a more practical level, U-Me’s Still Water program recently released “New Criteria for New Media,” a white paper and set of criteria for promotion and tenure of new media practitioners.

http://newmedia.umaine.edu/interarchive/new_criteria_for_new_media.html
http://newmedia.umaine.edu/interarchive/promotion_tenure_redefinitions.html

Ironically but appropriately, our field’s oldest peer-reviewed journal, Leonardo, will be publishing these in a future issue and has begun a discussion of the future of scholarly evaluation on Leonardo Electronic Forum. We invite anyone to join in the debate.

http://artsci.ucla.edu/LEF/node/104

jon

[...] and using CommentPress to engage in a conversation with readers. In reading over Wardruip-Fruin’s meta-reflections on blog-based peer review, I was struck by his observation that getting feedback from multiple reviewers helps him to figure [...]