No, I have not downloaded the corrected copy of any of the books on which I have made a quality report. I do not usually have an urge to reread a book right after I have read it. They do seem to take the quality reports seriously, though, but there is one that I am a little uneasy about. First, let me say that they seem to take one of three courses. If the reported problem is minor they apparently reproof it for the reported issue and make the correction. If the problem is major they will rescan the whole book and outsource it and replace it. I think you can count on that latter action if you report a fair quality book. The third course of action is to do nothing. Like I said, when I come across a book with an adult designation -- and this is only if I happen to download it; I don't go looking for them -- I use the quality report to request that the designation be removed. It appears that for the most part they disagree with me and leave it, but in one case I think I got it removed. I say I think because that was the last book I read and the last time I checked it was still in the unresolved queue. I used my report to tell them that the word I was frequently read as a 1 and to ask that the adult rating be removed. After I made that report I found out on this list that it might have simply been my Victor Stream that was not always reading an I as an I. Even though the book was still in the unresolved queue I did look at its detail page and the adult rating was, indeed, removed, so it is apparently not a hopeless exercise to ask for that to be removed. Now, as for the one I feel a bit uneasy about, I reported The Hugo Winners, Volume 4 edited by Isaac Asimov because it had numerous errors. I was later informed that it had been rescanned and replaced. As I said, I did not download it again, but I did look at the synopsis on the detail page. That synopsis seemed kind of unfamiliar. I was left wondering if what they rescanned was the right volume. If it was not, there is a book on Bookshare with the title The Hugo Winners, Volume 4, but is actually another volume.
_ _ _ "As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the world" Virginia Woolf The Militant: http://www.themilitant.com Pathfinder Press: http://www.pathfinderpress.com Granma International: http://www.granma.cu/ingles/index.html----- Original Message ----- From: "EVAN REESE" <mentat3@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2010 3:54 PM Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Send In Those Quality Reports 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 To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line.
