GooseGrade, the service that lets your blog readers correct any mistakes you've made, has a new plug-in for WordPress users that makes it easier for blog administrators to approve and implement corrections suggested by readers.
Once installed, corrections get sent directly to WordPress' dashboard, where administrators can then make a fix just like they would approve or deny a user comment. Because the plug-in is given privileges to write over your content, it then goes back into the post and makes the edit, without the administrator having to do it manually. Best of all, it shows you a before and after preview of what the correction would look like, so you can eyeball it without having to visit the post in full.
To aid in the correction process the plug-in supports multiple administrators, meaning a multi-author blog can decentralize who has to take a turn at the copy desk, and can pass off the responsibility if one of the members is out of the office. The plug-in also throws in a few nice tweaks like a complete history of suggested user corrections, and a summary of your blog's accuracy rating, which gets updated with each user-requested fix.
GooseGrade is working on a public API so others can come in to make similar tools, so expect to see similar plug-ins for other blogging platforms in the near future.
We all make mistakes. To err is what makes us humans. But at the same time, it can be pretty embarrassing when it's something that's seen by many--like a blog post. A new service called gooseGrade is trying to change that by crowd-sourcing blog copyediting to readers. The hope is that they'll help fix your mistakes instead of filling up the blog's comments or your e-mail in-box with correction recommendations.
To get the system working on their blogs, blog owners must insert a few lines of code into their template. This adds a small gooseGrade rating stamp that users can click when they want to correct you. While in this correction mode they can simply highlight things that need fixing, make a recommendation, then send it your way. The moment they do that, the post's gooseGrade, which starts at 100, begins to drop incrementally. Each user recommendation takes it down a few points, and it will not go back up until you've addressed it, either by accepting the change or simply declining.
As the blog owner you get a notification for each edit, and you can then go in and see what the suggested change is and have it fixed with one click.
Making a correction on someone else's blog is as simple as highlighting it. You then get to choose what you want fixed in one of four categories.
(Credit: CNET Networks)What makes the service particularly attractive to publishers is that it tracks these errors and corrections in a central location. If you're part of a group blog, this system helps you figure out who on your team needs the most development or hand-holding before hitting the publish button.
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