Social editing is on my mind. It’s the new black. Social editing is when a group of people edit text as part of a group effort, usually at the same time, usually in an ad hoc fashion, and usually without knowing very much about each other. Wikis are one kind of social editing. SubEthaEdit is another.

Making the web rounds this week was the Danish social editing site Wordy. It allows you to parcel out the copyediting of your web content to strangers. Install the WordPress plugin, write your post, and then get a price quote on the spot. You can have the post edited before or after it’s published.

You can also sign up to do editing (there are 127 editors now, up from 71 in the middle of December) and be on the receiving end of those jobs. The process is slow, as it requires up to two weeks for them to get outside confirmation of your credentials, but manageable. There’s a short editing test, too, which takes less than 15 minutes to complete. Comments on the support forums seem to indicate that work is a bit slow in coming. Wordy takes a 15% commission.

Michael Heilemann thinks Wordy is great. ArcticStartup had mixed thoughts in December on Wordy’s prospects.

Of a similar nature and making the rounds again this week was the web site Bite-Size Edits, which calls itself “a game where players get points for editing.” With little effort, you can edit classic works, text submitted by other users, or even your own writing. Click the “Edit Random Text” button to get a sentence for noodling. Editing here is done for fun, not for pay.

Is Bite-Size Edits a good time? Macy Halford at the New Yorker’s “Book Bench” blog seems to think so. Our favorite comment about the site was on the Chicago Manual of Style Facebook page: “Next up, brain surgery by crowdsourcing.”

Bite-Size Edits site is a part of Book Oven, a collection of online tools for preparing and publishing books. Both are run (in part) by Hugh McGuire, who also founded LibriVox, which organizes volunteers to make audio recordings of public domain books and which just successfully raised funds for three more years of service.

Rosie in Liverpool at The Rosemoirs and Asrai Devin at The Writing Life have opinions about Bite-Size Edit, too.

In January, the Columbia Journalism Review reviewed Bite-Size Edit and a similar site, gooseGrade, which also shows promise. From the article:

Simply put, they have created a way for Web sites to crowdsource edits and corrections. Web site owners can install the gooseGrade widget in order to have an easy, streamlined method for readers to submit proposed edits or corrections. Then gooseGrade collects and sorts these submissions so the publisher or author can accept or reject the changes. It simplifies the corrections process, which is a very good thing. The company also developed a WordPress plugin that makes the fixing process even faster.

I’ve written newspaper articles, blog posts, and dictionary entries for people I’ve never met in offices I’ve never visited in countries I’ve never traveled to. But they have been done as part of ongoing professional relationships. That is what I believe is being given up by degrees in exchange for expediency on the social editing sites.

I will use these sites, both as an editor and as a writer, but I think I will look for my Max Perkins, too.

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