[bksvol-discuss] Send In Those Quality Reports
- From: "EVAN REESE" <mentat3@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2010 15:54:58 -0400
Hello Folks,
I know that Roger, and perhaps others whom I've forgotten, have encouraged the
sending in of quality reports when people find problems in the books they
download from Bookshare; but I do not recall that he ever said whether he
checked on a book that was replaced as a result of one of his reports. Well, I
did send in a quality report and I did check the replacement book, and I can
say that the result was impressive.
The book was The Gathering Storm, the twelfth book in the Wheel of Time series
by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. The book really was an excellent scan
overall, however several proper names were incorrect either part of the time,
or in a couple of cases, every time they appeared.
For example, the city of Malden was consistently given as Maiden. (This is one
of those issues that couldn't be fixed with a simple search and replace because
Maiden -- with a capital m -- was also used in the book.) Rand's father's name
Tam was given as Tarn about half the time. And in this version, poor Lews
Theren did not call out the name of his dead wife Ilyena, but rather he called
out Hyena instead, every time. Fortunately, this name doesn't appear a huge
number of times, but although funny in a way, it was a bit horrifying as well,
and definitely jarring to come upon.
Well, I reported all these issues and a couple of others in late January. I
heard back from Lindsie Verma in early March, about five weeks later. While I
do not want to read the Bookshare version of the book again, 784 pages, (I will
read the NLS version when it comes out if Roy Avers is still reading them), I
did a search for every problem I listed in the report. Since I haven't actually
read through it, I cannot say whether any new issues may have cropped up in
this new version. But so far as I can tell, every one of the quality issues I
reported was eliminated. Maiden is now Malden when it should be, Tam is now Tam
all the time, and Lews Theren is once again calling out the correct name of his
dead wife, Ilyena. The other issues I mentioned in the report seem to have
disappeared as well.
So I encourage everyone to send in those reports when you encounter quality
issues. Make them detailed, give plenty of examples. The evidence I have is
that they are taken seriously. Future readers will benefit, and the better the
quality of books, the better Bookshare looks as well.
Evan
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