Fellow volunteers, I would like to offer a suggestion for your consideration. In the past, we have occasionally discussed needing to tackle the books that linger on step 1. I personally felt bad about people having submitted books that weren't being processed. However, I have come to believe that my efforts were misguided and focused in the wrong direction. I believe there may be a better, more effective way to focus our attention as a group. When I looked last night, there were 405 books awaiting validation on the step 1 page. By looking at the Books In Process list, it is easy to see which books are rated as excellent. I'd like to propose a deliberate shift of our focus so we can process books rated excellent first. The people submitting excellent scans have taken time to proofread their work, and they shouldn't have to wait for approval while we eek out a decent read from a raw scan rated fair. Once we process many of the excellent books, we could turn to working on the books rated good to see if they can be improved. What do I think we should do with the older books rated fair or good on step 1? For now, I vote that we leave them there like we might leave paperwork in a drawer until we have time to read it. They'll sink to the bottom of the download list and will be easier to find later. Careful submitters would be rewarded by responsive approval times. Those who consistently produce raw, illegible scans may enquire about what happened to their books and could be diplomatically directed to the list or chat room for some tailored help in improving scan quality.
What do you all think? Could we work together and get some really nice scans processed over the next couple of months? Do you see any wholes in my thinking? As it stands now, I am not going to touch a book that is rated good or fair until we have gotten or step 1 page down to 200 books awaiting attention. I'm willing to re-evaluate this decision if any of you see a serious flaw with this.
Monica Willyard
