[bksvol-discuss] Re: Comments on Impulse by Ellen Hopkins
- From: Carrie Karnos <ckarnos@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2010 10:24:30 -0800 (PST)
I've been waiting for this thread to die, but it looks like it's not going to,
so I want to put in my 2 cents and hopefully rearrange everyone's opinion about
it.
Since the outsourcers are paid, they are held to a higher standard than the
volunteers. There are books by volunteers that I have put into the collection,
that I would have returned for more editing if they had come from the
outsourcers. Books from the outsourcers are usually very high quality, books
from volunteers range all over the place. Some are superb, some are lousy, and
everywhere in between. I return about 1 book in 10 from volunteers, and about 1
book in 30 from the outsourcers.
The outsourcers are hiring proofreaders all the time, and occasionally they get
someone who isn't up to par. (Yes, the outsourcers have a training program, but
clearly some students don't pay attention in class.) I usually catch the books
that the newby outsourcers produce, but obviously I didn't catch Impulse. This
whole kerfuffle is MY fault, not the outsourcer's. I should have caught the
book, but I didn't. All you need to do, if you find a lousy book from an
outsourcer or indeed anyone else, is to click on the Report Book Quality Issue
link on the book's Book Information Page and file a report about it. You will
be told when the replacement book is in the collection. It's not a big deal. I
try to catch as many books as I can, but occasionally one will slip through. MY
BAD!!!
Carrie
________________________________
From: Judy s. <cherryjam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Mon, January 4, 2010 9:27:09 AM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Comments on Impulse by Ellen Hopkins
I'll second Evan's observation. I've downloaded books in the collection that
were added in the last year (not ASCII scans from the early 2000s) which were
scanned and proofed by volunteers that were full of scannos and repetitive
errors, had headers mixed in with the text, were missing chapter headings and
much more. The vast majority of books I download done by the outsourcers are
well done. If I find one that isn't, I submit a quality report, just like I do
when I find one with errors that was done by a volunteer. But I don't think
outsourcers are "getting away" with anything.
Judy s.
EVAN REESE wrote:
> Actually, volunteers and members do get away with it.
> You should have seen the copy of Dan Brown's Angels & Demons that I read
> that was added to the collection last March.
> This was not done by outsourcers. (I won't mention the names of the submitter
> and the proofreader since the book is gone now anyway.) I submitted a quality
> report on it and it was replaced, although I haven't looked at the
> replacement.
> Among the most egregious problems were:
> garbled headers at the tops of nearly all pages
> almost no chapter titles at the beginnings of chapters
> the first word of each chapter--or at the change of scene, it was not easy to
> be sure because of the missing chapter titles--was garbled
> random hard returns in the middles of paragraphs, often followed by the
> letter i.
> One of the things that really bugged me, although it did not appear too many
> times, was that the initials LHC, which stands for Large Hadron Collider,
> were rendered as the word the.
> This is certainly not an exhaustive list. I submitted the quality report
> several months ago and I don't have a copy of it. I'm sure that I've
> forgotten stuff I put in the report, and even that wasn't a page-by-page
> listing of all the errors.
> Clearly, the submitter just threw this book up onto the check out page with
> little, if any, cleanup; and it was obvious that the proofreader didn't even
> look at it.
> I'm not saying that outsourcers shouldn't be held to at least as high a
> standard as volunteers and members. Of course they should be. But it's not
> exactly fair to say the outsourcers are getting away with stuff that
> volunteers and members are not.
> Evan
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