[bksvol-discuss] Re: An alternative to validating fair quality submissions

  • From: Guido Corona <guidoc@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 19:35:20 -0600

Jackie,  are you working with Kurzweil?  It can quickly tell you a book's 
accuracy.    . . . and in general,  if you think the book is not good 
enough for human consumption, it usually is because it isn't.

If you have no Kurzweil,  you can still check through bookshare the 
quality of the book. Try to upload it temporarily -- i suggest the 
unedited original.  On the validation panel,  the Bookshare system will 
report the accuracy of the book.  If the system reports more than 0.7% of 
words not to be in the dictionary, the book is not 'excellent.  If more 
than 1.4% of words are not in the dictionary,  the book is not even 
'good'.

If you found the book to be 'exceelent' or 'good',  just close Internet 
Explorer to cancel the validation transaction and continue with your 
editing.  If the book falls significantly into the 'fair' region, . . . . 
well, you know,  I am totally heartless and would simply proceed with a 
rejection and so would nuke it without a second thought.

G.
 

Guido Dante Corona
IBM Research,
Human Ability & Accessibility Center,   (HA&AC)
Austin Tx.
Phone:  512. 838. 9735.
Email: guidoc@xxxxxxxxxxx
Web:  http://www.ibm.com/able

". . . Maybe it was only those who were most certain they were right who 
were guaranteed to be wrong. And that maybe, just maybe, those who 
questioned the most were in the end those who came closest to being wise."
[David Poyer, The Command]




"Jackie McBride" <abletec@xxxxxxxxx> 
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01/14/2008 05:36 PM
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[bksvol-discuss] Re: An alternative to validating fair quality submissions






I'll tell yall what, folks--I am absolutely utterly & profoundly
astounded at how much cleaning up of this book I'm doing that was
rated frickin excellent on step 1! Somehow it just does not seem quite
right-- oodles & oodles ofspurious characters, quite a few letters
messed up, & I'm rather suspecting even some missing pages, though
it's hard to prove cuz the numbers jive but not the text.  Another
quarter per hour project. Or less--Lol!  & I'll tell yall what some
more--if I paid for a membership & downloaded this book in the
condition it's in now, I would be sooo royally torked! So even those
books w/excellent ratings--'taint necessarily so.  Bookshare really
needs to get a prevalidating tool up & running.  Or maybe it's just
that I'm a perfectionist & I need to quit worrying about it, do the
minimum, & throw it back up w/all the garbage intact.  I somehow just
cannot bring myself to do it. I really think a prevalidating tool &
refusal to accept books (at least for credit) that aren't good (or
maybe even excellent) quality would be a real start. As it is now, q&d
validators & scanners get credits quickly (so long as the stuff isn't
rejected) while those who are careful about their work struggle to get
theirs.

On 1/14/08, Allison Hilliker <bookshare_girl@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> If one does follow Donna's suggestion of submitting excellent copies of 
fair
> quality books on the step one page, I have one request.  Please submit 
your
> excellent copy to the step one page before rejecting the fair quality 
scan.
> I say this because I know of scanners who reject books because they say 
they
> will submit a better scan, and then they don't do it.
>
> Just my thoughts,
>
> Allison
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Donna Smith" <donnafsmith@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2008 8:22 AM
> Subject: [bksvol-discuss] An alternative to validating fair quality
> submissions
>
>
> > Hi all.
> >
> >
> >
> > I apologize in advance if this suggestion ruffles feathers, but it is 
made
> > in the spirit of getting excellent quality books into the collection.
> >
> >
> >
> > I am one of the volunteers who believes that "validating" a book 
shouldn't
> > involve rewriting it because the scan is poor.  There are some books 
which
> > have strange formatting or difficult tables and charts or other things
> > that
> > typically don't scan well and the only way to get such books into the
> > collection is in fact for a very patient validator to go through the 
whole
> > book and fix problematic errors that a rescan won't fix.
> >
> >
> >
> > However, there are a lot of books on the step one download page that 
are
> > just straightforward text, fiction or nonfiction, that should scan 
with no
> > problems, but are rated as fair.  In my opinion, it is a waste of
> > volunteer
> > time and effort to have a validator make these scans passable.
> >
> >
> >
> > So here's my alternative.  If I, or any other scanner, obtains a copy 
of a
> > book that is currently awaiting validation and rated fair, would it be
> > appropriate for us to download the fair copy, reject it, and then 
upload a
> > better scan of the same book?
> >
> >
> >
> > Thoughts?  Ideas?  No rotten tomatoes please!
> >
> >
> >
> > Donna
> >
> >
>
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>
>


-- 
Jackie McBride
Please join my fight against breast cancer
<http://teamacs.acsevents.org/site/TR?px=1790196&pg=personal&fr_id=3489>
& Check out my homepage at:
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