[bksvol-discuss] Suggestion summary for Step 1
- From: "Satauna Howery" <sthowery@xxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2007 15:16:12 -0500
It seems to me we've had a lot of great suggestions come in recently as to
what might make Step 1 more manageable. I just wanted to synthesize some of
them into one e-mail.
1. When validators release a book, make it possible for the validator who
is releasing the book to comment, so that they might articulate why they're
sending it back to step 1. "Not something I want to read... Not enough
time to validate." etc. I think this would be first thing I'd implement.
Another comment someone might write might be: "Missing pages 23-24.
Submitted by bookshare volunteer, so I can't track them down. Can someone
else get the book and add the missing pages? Otherwise it's a great scan and
all clean." Comments like these are specific, and they'd give books with one
or two missing pages a chance to be added to the collection as opposed to
being rejected because someone can't get the book or because the original
submitter can't be reached.
2. Make it possible for a validator to upload their version of the file
they've been working on back to Step 1. This way, they could release the
book after doing something to it, and in the comments field mentioned above,
they could write in what they did so the next validator would know. This
would also make it possible for someone who had OpenBook, for example, to
download an .ark book, convert it, and upload the converted .rtf file back
to Step 1 for another validator.
3. Resolve the infamous BookShare volunteer. Either assign a number to
each volunteer who submits a book, or, better yet, require that submitters
provide an e-mail address so that validators can get a hold of them. This
doesn't mean their names have to show up under the submission field once the
book is approved, but I think they should show up with e-mail addresses on
the Step 1 page.
4. This is a suggestion that I haven't seen mentioned, but it's something I
employ on good or fair books that I download to validate, or on books whose
submitters I don't know At this point, so far as I know, the person
submitting a book has to decide what quality that book has. This means that
someone can submit something of excellent quality and inadvertently rate it
fair. It also means that someone can think their submission is perfectly
awesome and give it an excellent rating when indeed it should have been
rated fair. So, I do the following.
A. Download the book.
B. Go to step 2 and upload it.
C. After uploading the book, the page appears that lists things like
categories, and book quality. But now, the file has been run through
BookShare's spell-checking tools and it has a quality rating that I consider
more realistic. Often I find this rating to be different than the rating
the original submitter gave, and it gives me a clearer starting point when I
begin validation. For example, if BookShare's tools rate it fair but the
submitter thought it was excellent, then why is that? Are there lots of
foreign language words? Is it really just a rotten scan? What's the deal?
5. I applaud the person who suggested spending more time validating and
less time writing messages to this list that have nothing or little to do
with improving BookShare and its collection. Is it really necessary for
people to articulate what they're currently validating, or what books
they've just uploaded for approval? Is it possible for people to write "me
too" and "Thank you" to the person you want to agree with or thank instead
of sending the one-liner to the list? I appreciate the community, but the
hundreds of messages that go through this list are overwhelming.
That's all I can think of for now. Happy validating, happy submitting, and
happy holidays to everyone.
Satauna
sthowery@xxxxxxx
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