5 ms·

I found printed documents to be much more helpful than using Quip (or WorkDocs). Quip / WorkDocs means you start getting comments, highlights and other things

I found printed documents to be much more helpful than using Quip (or WorkDocs). Quip / WorkDocs means you start getting comments, highlights and other things from people -- which are then visible to everyone else at the meeting. If there was a way for you to personally highlight your concerns during the read-through and then the presenter could display them all at once that would be great. By not having that ability, it tends to mean the person with the "most authority" has their comment taken seriously and addressed straight away -- just like having the "loudest voice" in a meeting works against allowing everyone to contribute.

grogenaut 5y ago
I actually prefer the online docs format as there's usually a bunch of things people jump on, and if I see someone commenting on that, I can keep reading and get further down the doc (better coverage). When I did doc reviews on paper, I found everyone would find the same weak point in the first paragraph and would miss getting to the end of the doc. Another major benefit, esp for junior employees, is the person who wrote the doc does not have to take as many notes, they're all in the online doc. Meetings full of senior folks tend to have TPM/PMs in the meeting who are playing notetaker. But junior folks are defending their thesis and taking down notes, it's just a lot to do. Online docs makes that a lot easier. As I've had mentors say... if you find issues in the first part of the doc, what are they hiding at the end... Save your questions till you read the whole thing.
- alok-g 5y ago
  Understood that with printed docs multiple people may start commenting on the same points, however, the discussion happens only once still. I personally find that many of the comments showing up with online commenting are not worth, and they don't even get acted upon. What's lost in the process are good comments amongst the sea of them. Notetakers should be capturing the key points anyways. Large number of online comments is perhaps even worse than meeting summary notes with a raw listing who said what.
  - grogenaut 5y ago
    I'm with you on filtering out the key points. But I felt I had to do that in paper meetings as well. I have no real issue closing out comments after the review. I've also started making heavy use of suggestions instead of comments for minor edits... I spend a lot of time doing grammar and phrasing stuff on early release documents. This feels more like collaborative editing. Both paper and online docs are a lot better than sending around word docs with track changes on tho.
    - alok-g 5y ago
      +1 overall. >> I'm with you on filtering out the key points. But I felt I had to do that in paper meetings as well. Agreed. Even for the verbal discussions after paper meetings, the law of triviality still usually applies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality Just that it has become worse with online documents. >> I have no real issue closing out comments after the review. +1. >> are a lot better than sending around word docs with track changes on tho. I agree, collating feedback from multiple Word documents is a lot harder for accommodating the smaller comments (i.e., those comments which should be handled later offline). It would have been ideal if (online) document review tools had the following features: (a) Allow the reviewers to mark their own comments on importance. I would find this useful even as a reviewer so that I can bring up only the important points into the verbal discussion. It would also be helpful if I can mark some comments as intended for myself only. (b) Submitting the key comments first (using 'a' above), subsequently the remaining ones after the meeting.
alok-g 5y ago
+1 With online commenting, comments show up even before they have read the whole document which partly defeats the purpose. Often the comments are already addressed later in the doc. With printed documents, the audience naturally brings the most important comments first, and many less important ones would never come. I personally prefer to send documents by email. Everyone has their own copy in which they may put comments, but what comes back in the meetings are only good comments.

grogenaut 5y ago

I actually prefer the online docs format as there's usually a bunch of things people jump on, and if I see someone commenting on that, I can keep reading and get further down the doc (better coverage). When I did doc reviews on paper, I found everyone would find the same weak point in the first paragraph and would miss getting to the end of the doc. Another major benefit, esp for junior employees, is the person who wrote the doc does not have to take as many notes, they're all in the online doc. Meetings full of senior folks tend to have TPM/PMs in the meeting who are playing notetaker. But junior folks are defending their thesis and taking down notes, it's just a lot to do. Online docs makes that a lot easier. As I've had mentors say... if you find issues in the first part of the doc, what are they hiding at the end... Save your questions till you read the whole thing.

alok-g 5y ago
Understood that with printed docs multiple people may start commenting on the same points, however, the discussion happens only once still. I personally find that many of the comments showing up with online commenting are not worth, and they don't even get acted upon. What's lost in the process are good comments amongst the sea of them. Notetakers should be capturing the key points anyways. Large number of online comments is perhaps even worse than meeting summary notes with a raw listing who said what.
- grogenaut 5y ago
  I'm with you on filtering out the key points. But I felt I had to do that in paper meetings as well. I have no real issue closing out comments after the review. I've also started making heavy use of suggestions instead of comments for minor edits... I spend a lot of time doing grammar and phrasing stuff on early release documents. This feels more like collaborative editing. Both paper and online docs are a lot better than sending around word docs with track changes on tho.
  - alok-g 5y ago
    +1 overall. >> I'm with you on filtering out the key points. But I felt I had to do that in paper meetings as well. Agreed. Even for the verbal discussions after paper meetings, the law of triviality still usually applies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality Just that it has become worse with online documents. >> I have no real issue closing out comments after the review. +1. >> are a lot better than sending around word docs with track changes on tho. I agree, collating feedback from multiple Word documents is a lot harder for accommodating the smaller comments (i.e., those comments which should be handled later offline). It would have been ideal if (online) document review tools had the following features: (a) Allow the reviewers to mark their own comments on importance. I would find this useful even as a reviewer so that I can bring up only the important points into the verbal discussion. It would also be helpful if I can mark some comments as intended for myself only. (b) Submitting the key comments first (using 'a' above), subsequently the remaining ones after the meeting.

alok-g 5y ago

+1 With online commenting, comments show up even before they have read the whole document which partly defeats the purpose. Often the comments are already addressed later in the doc. With printed documents, the audience naturally brings the most important comments first, and many less important ones would never come. I personally prefer to send documents by email. Everyone has their own copy in which they may put comments, but what comes back in the meetings are only good comments.