A dilemma

My job as the Managing Editor of a magazine involves setting a lot of deadlines. Every time I send an email to someone about the article they've submitted, asking a question about their article, I give a deadline. Whenever I send an article to one of my colleagues to edit, I set a deadline. I have to set deadlines for my production editor, and even for my boss. That sounds a bit harsh, but I've discovered that unless you do, some people just won't bother to reply, or they'll reply in their own time, which doesn't help me keep a magazine on schedule. I try to reasonable, usually allowing four or five days for the review or edit of a single article.

Now I've just had my medicine dealt to me. I've been asked by someone to look at over 90 articles and give feedback on them, for a story-project. "We would like your feedback", is the exact phrase used. I asked for a deadline and got the reply, "Next week".

Huh? Probably they don't expect me to look at all 90 articles, but I think, given my current work load, I might have trouble even reading just a few of the articles, plus giving "editorial feedback" on several.

I wonder about how much experience this person has in editing? It often takes me over an hour just to edit one article, not because they are extraordinarily bad, but because there are many layers of questions to ask, for example:

• Does it make sense?
• Is it well organised?
• Does it answer all the questions it raises?
• Does the logic hold up?
• Is the tone suitable?
• Does it fit the audience?

Then you think about structure, the lead, and the conclusion.

After that you look at more obvious stuff like, spelling, punctuation, etc.

And then I have to decide whether to make the adjustments myself (often easier) or to ask hard questions of the author and get them to make the adjustments (takes longer, but produces a "truer" product).

Part of this dilemma I talked about in this post, when I talked about the "Fuzzy Boundary" problem that we have in volunteer work, which is what missionary work essentially is. I don't have a job description as an OMF missionary. It doesn't exist. So, how much obligation do I have to contribute to a project that someone else in our organisation has dreamed up? Yes, I have editing experience, something not many people in the missionary community have, which means that I feel somewhat obligated to contribute. But I also have a number of other responsibilities that I'm already committed to.

Now, I'm not sure what to do about this story-project. Should I write back to clarify what they expect of me? Should I just do what I can of the articles? Or should I just ignore the whole thing?

Any ideas?