Too Many Editors

In the last few weeks I have been working on some projects that actually required me to work collaboratively with others. Documents have passed from person to person with everyone making their edits. That is the nature of collaboration.

Collaboration is supposed to result in a better product with the skills and talents of the entire group combined. As I work to combine the various contributions into the final document I am reminded of the Demotivators definition of meetings: None of us is as dumb as all of us. Everyone has a favorite font, text size, border preference on tables and text boxes.

I have my favorites, too.

And I have the document last.

The challenge, though comes with the proofreading to make certain I successfully converted the disparate styles into one cohesive document. The next time I am the final editor, there will be rules. Collaboration can be beneficial to the work, but too many editors ruin the document.