[bksvol-discuss] Re: txt page breaks redux

  • From: Kelly Ford <Kelly@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 09:16:08 -0800

Guido,

What makes your definition of things the correct one? To say that others are on the wrong end of things just because their view of what books are acceptable for submission doesn't mean that your view of Bookshare is correct.

Where has Bookshare ever stated what the volunteer role is that agrees with what you outline below?

For me personally anything I scan and can read I submit. I don't spend a great deal of time messing about ensuring it is 100% accurate. If I was able to read it, it is likely others will enjoy access to the text as well. If folks find the quality not to their liking then they can move on to a different book or improve the quality.

Personally if I've read the full text of a book before submission I validate it myself. If it was a scan for reading later job I'll submit the book and then either validate it once read or let someone else do the validation.

Who's to say what makes a poor scan. For me I'm not going to spend endless time working for perfection to get something back into electronic format when in most cases it started that way before it ended on the printed page I'm putting back into an electronic format. The hours I save are devoted to communication with the publishing industry about making e-texts more directly accessible rather than this stop-gap measure of scanning printed books.

Make no mistake I love the ability to scan books and the access to information it affords but at some level it is a huge waste of time when the books exist in electronic format already.



At 07:31 AM 12/29/2004, you wrote:

Sorry Mike, but rather, some submitters appear to be on the incorrectly assuming end of things.
If I scan for my own enjoyment, I simply scan, then read. I do not truly care if I have removed all errors. If I submit a book to Bookshare, I am performing a job for an entity with "PAYING CUSTOMERS". The fact I am not a salaried employee but I am simply awarded some brownie points by a finnicky system that assigns those points to some else half of the time, is totally and utterly immaterial.
For all intents and purposes I am working for Bookshare, I am not handing some desperados my scraps of e-food.
I have scanned plenty of books that I judged were not good enough to warrant submission: I have never submitted those copies, nor will I in the future. In many cases, as I got better and better recognition engines, I scanned again, and again. Some of these rescans improved to the point where I decided to submit them, in other cases they are still in my ""Hall Of Shame."



If a submitter does not care if their labour is accepted or rejected, I feel even more comfortable nuking their flawed submissions. I am once again repeating, working for Bookshare customers.
In my rejections, I always add an informative note about the technical reason for rejection and most often what the submitter needs to do to avoid future problems. It is up to the submitter to request this info from the administrator. Quite Frankly Mike, there are fortunately few volunteers who systematically submit poor jobs, they themselves know who they are and should have gotten the message. At least in one particular case one of these folks has recently decided to become an anonymous submitter. Unfortunately the unique glib and uninformative nature of his short synopses just gives him away, even without downloading the submission for analysis and confirmation.



And no, I am sorry, a poor quality book is not at all better than no book at all, it is only a poor book, and it leaves a nasty taste in my mouth.


Regards,

Guido Dante Corona
IBM Accessibility Center,  Austin Tx.
Research Division,
Phone:  512. 838. 9735.
Email: guidoc@xxxxxxxxxxx
Web:  http://www.ibm.com/able



Mike Pietruk <pietruk@xxxxxxxxx>
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12/29/2004 03:47 AM
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Guido

You are also assuming, and I would suggest erroneously, that the submitter
cares in all cases whether their books is accepted or rejected.
Some folks submit their scans as a courtesy to allow others the benefit of
what they've done for themselves.
Hence, by just rejected their work, you convey no msg other than BookShare
doesn't want it.
Hence, you are not going to improve their efforts as their initial
intention wasn't a BookShare submission but to read it for themselves.
If they consider the book readable for themselves, that is all that
matters to them in this instance.

While I wholeheartedly agree that better quality books are desirable over
worse scanned ones, I also recognize the philosophy upon which BookShare
is based.
I also recognize that something else is at play:  BookShare, due to its
success and growth, is perhaps bursting at its ability to process received
submissions and needs, therefore, to figure out a means of making the
workload managable.
While I do personally nuke books that are of such poor quality making
reading difficult or impossible, I also accept the notion that I also
rather have a poorer quality book than none at all.
And in many cases, nuking a book won't be having it rescanned but gone
forever.





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