GooseGrade lets readers copyedit your blog
Ever wanted a copy editor for your blog but didn't want to pay for it? Check out gooseGrade, a crowd-sourced editing project that gives your readers the power to correct your mistakes.
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.
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.
Another attractive reason to have it on your blog is that the service will highlight networked posts in one central location that organizes popular or otherwise notable stories. Like SezWho, which has done something similar with comments in networked sites, there's some real potential for this, that is as long as enough blogs are participating.
The service was created by John Brooks Pounders, who founded ButterBeeHappy.com, and is launching next week in private beta. Until then, you can see what the editing tool looks like in the video embedded below.
Update: Pounders dropped me a line to make note of how the crowd rating system works. For those who were concerned about spamming this is your answer:
"GooseGrade does rate the 'crowd.' Each user has an accuracy rating for how often their corrections are accepted. We find this by dividing corrections accepted by total corrections posted. This should help keep spamming at bay and also provide an easy way for the author to know whether or not to listen to the grader. ex. 'joewxboy is correct 95% of the time.'"