A friend just pointed out to me that my article about Amazon.com and publishing contains two egregrious misspellings: Hermann Melville (should be Herman) and Frank Kafka (should be Franz). The latter error is particularly embarrassing. I’ve written papers on the guy, even short stories and taught college classes on some of his stories. Not a single time have I misspelled his name! Not once!
One thing that Kuro5hin does particularly well is that it allows users to make 2 different kinds of comments: topical comments and editorial comments. From now on, it should be required that content managements include 2 things: reediting of content after being approved (without needing to undergo the workflow process again). Secondly, readers should have the option to make private editorial comments to the writer/editor about proofreading and copyediting that typical readers wouldn’t have to see.
I’ve never been a great proofreader, but I’m certainly not a bad one. It’s just a law of averages; write enough, and a certain amount of what you write is just wrong no matter how many times you look at it.
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