An idea for collaborative document review

Start with a post. It could be editable (like a wiki) or static (like a blog or forum entry). For this explanation I'll say we're discussing the U.S. Constitution.

Using fancy cutting-edge web-technologies (ajax anyone?) allow people to enter a 'commenting' mode (hit 'comment' button) and select words (not letters, words). They could select one rule, for example. We'll say they select the part that says the executive shall be one president. Then they can rank this part. Let's rank it low. We really don't like this part. Then we go through and rank other parts, too.

We highlight all the words in the first amendment and rank them high. We select the words "a well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." and give it a mediocre rating, and add the comment "confusing. What do you mean?"

We can go through and rank any combination of contiguous words and give them a rating. We can also add comments.

When we're done rating and commenting we click 'Done' or whatever, and we see the article again. The only difference is that now the text we've commented on is colorized (or something that is a finely adjustable change that is easily visually recognizable). For example, text we rated highly is more green, text rated lowly is more red. The higher the rating, the brighter green, the worse the rating, the more red. Comments don't show up at all. Then

Here's where the fun part begins. Let's say that now you go and do the same thing, except you add different comments and ratings. Some of yours overlap with mine, some don't. Then more people do it, then more, then more, then more. What happens? Scores are averaged per word. I selected the entire second amendment. You select just the second half and say "NOOOO!" and rate it badly. Others select the whole thing and rate it well. The average rating of ALL ratings goes toward the color. The NUMBER of ratings could affect the size of the word.

I can also select some words and click 'view comments' or some such thing. This will, surprise surprise, show, perhaps, an excerpt of the total text containing the words I selected, and then all comments that apply to the words, perhaps with the precise set of words selected for each comment.

Uncommented words would appear with default color and normal size. There would be an obvious difference between commented/rated words and uncommented/rated.

This is just a preliminary idea. It could definitely be expanded. I like it because it would provide instant visual information about the most contentious or problematic areas, so you could immediately focus your efforts at revising.

There could be open comments/ratings and a select set of people authorized to revise. You could even allow for different versions (perhaps with a limit) for each section such that sections with multiple versions appeared as layered text, one version closely right on top of another, with the top-X # of versions displayed only, not all of them if there were lots. This is just another idea. If that was implimented then it would make sense for everyone to be able to write AND rate/comment.

You could even set a threshold such that once the text reached a certain acceptability and held it for X period of time it was accepted or something, or had some weight.

This system could be very useful to internet-based decision-making systems.