A Response from One of Our Kairos Editors
Kairos differs from other journals both by its hypertextuality and in what it calls a "Collaborative Hypertext(ual) Peer Review Process." Part of that process included editorial review from Joel English who, after making a variety of editorial suggestions, added some final commentary which he dubbed less a "review" than a "response and conversation about your findings."
We found his response so insightful we wanted to add it to our conversation, so here it is:
> As I read through Laura's
> correspondence with the writers and your rhetorical analysis, I felt
> something happening that I've often felt happening with email based
> conferencing: that is, the conference starts with a text, deals with
> that text, and tries to finish or update a text. Something seems to be
> wrong with this.> North tells us, and we chant along with him, "we're not here to make
> better writings, we're here to make better writers." And it's true,
> with f2f conferences (and even in MOO conferences, I'll argue), we work
> with writers, deal with their concerns, and have real active interaction
> outside of the text-at-hand (along with interaction inside of that
> text). However, except for a preliminary "Hi so-and-so. I read your
> paper and I've inserted some comments. . . ," the whole conference seems
> to take place inside of a text. . .inside of a product. This seems sorta
> contrary to what it is the writing center tries to do: email almost
> forces us into a Current Traditional Read and Response of the text, like
> Laura wound up doing.
