I know that it's perhaps considered a frivolous request but I too would like
to see a read out of the total number of validations and submissions on the
member page.
As you said Kaitlyn, it can be motivational to see the total numbers.
*** Grace
For scanning and validating tips check out http://www.jbrownell.com/bks/tl.asp
Hello Monica and Jake,
<<5. Volunteers can see how much credit they have earned within a given year
by checking the My Account area. As for giving credit to others. This one
isn't on the top of my list, as swapping credits to users that don't have
any...well it just cuts down on the revenue BookShare gains from the yearly
subscription. I would support giving credits to schools that are financially
challenged. I know for some people $50 is a lot, but that's only $4.17 a
month. That is less than what one paperback book costs in most
circumstances. And of course volunteering can reduce it.
On checking credits. It would be nice to see a readout of total submissions
and total validations on our member page. IT appears that once you get
enough credits for the next year it just tells you that you have enough for
your next subscription. Even if we never get to the point of giving credits
to others it's would be a nice motivational touch to know what one has done
over time.... :)
Katie
Katie Hill You can learn a lot if you are humble enough to listen. Lynn Lewis Warren Email: Kaitlyn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
-----Original Message----- From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jake Brownell Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2006 12:56 PM To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: To Jake re: Engineering Improvements
Hi Monica,
I'm always interested to hear new ideas and thoughts about BookShare. I
am on the tech advisor group, and especially as we move into summer, I hope
to devote a lot of time to the project. Anyone is welcome to discuss things
with me offlist if you don't want to flood the other volunteers.
Monica, you bring up a few good points. Some of the minor improvements
sure wouldn't take a lot of time. That time however, does cost BookShare
money. The understanding I have is that BookShare's parent company Benetech,
has the engineers under it. And each Benetech project has to pay for the engineer work to be done. So, something simple does, unfortunately, eat at the budget. I think this is mainily why we don't see some of the small changes we'd like.
I'll address each item by number now.
1. Fixing that damn volunteer form is one of the things high on my list. It
needs to work right so that things can be processed in an efficient manner.
Instead, we're having folks send email to the volunteer address, which
probably gets flooded with messages so much that items get lost.
2. FTP uploads. I'm not sure if we'll ever see that. It would require the
setup of a ftp server to handle the requests, and it would just be the
potential for another security leak. As well, you'd still be accessing the
server through your web browser, ftp with lots of web browsers is less than
ideal. Unfortunately we couldn't just login with a dedicated ftp client and
send up are file, because that would be too advanced for novice computer
users. As well, it wouldn't be possible to send the data along with that
file in a consistent manner.
3. Proper coding on the forms? The last time I looked at the submission form
I believe it did have label tags to bind the correct text to each form
field. Is this what you're talking about? If not, please let me know. And if
it is what you're talking about but you don't think they're there, let me know and I will look again. My experience is that the BookShare forms tend to read pretty well.
4. Adding these pages would be a great idea and we'd all love to see it
happen. As Gerald has mentioned before, taking the step1 page as a template,
removing the download column and changing the database query to reflect the
correct filter should be all that's required.
BTW I think the site is written in php, but I'm not 100% positive as
each page does have an HTML extension.
5. Volunteers can see how much credit they have earned within a given year
by checking the My Account area. As for giving credit to others. This one
isn't on the top of my list, as swapping credits to users that don't have
any...well it just cuts down on the revenue BookShare gains from the yearly
subscription. I would support giving credits to schools that are financially
challenged. I know for some people $50 is a lot, but that's only $4.17 a month. That is less than what one paperback book costs in most circumstances. And of course volunteering can reduce it.
Now, I'm not sure if you were asking about volunteers contributing code to the website. I don't ever see that happening as security/copyright concerns would overweigh that possibility.
I hope I got everything. Give a holler if I forgot something.
Jake
----- Original Message ----- From: "Monica" <plumlipstick@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2006 9:46 PM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] To Jake re: Engineering Improvements
Jake, I can see how you would think that revamping Bookshare would cost a
lot of money. Would you consider an alternate point of view? I would
appreciate hearing your thoughts on what I have to say. You are a strong
member of Bookshare, and I wonder if you would be open to sharing some of
these ideas with the staff at some point since you work with them
sometimes. My post is intended to spark creativity, and to say that we
have more options than seem to be on the table. <smile> I am frustrated,
but I'm feeling that way because I see actions that can be taken in a
matter of hours to drastically improve the Bookshare service for all of us
without financial cost to Bookshare.
I would like to point out to you that not all of the engineering issues
would cost Bookshare money. In fact, 3 out of my top five could be done
by you, me, or any other person with a little HTML knowledge. Since this
is a nonprofit organization, active Bookshare volunteers could even help
to implement some of these over the summer. These things don't really
require money. They require time and attention to detail. I will admit
that some of the big things would require money, but there's no excuse for
fixing some of these no-cash things. They could make life much easier for
all of us, including the staff. since you asked about the top 5 engineering improvements...
1. If Bookshare is going to grow, I think this one is urgent like a house
on fire. Fix the volunteer application form so that it terminates
correctly and completes the application process correctly. It currently
leaves active Bookshare members who apply to volunteer in limbo, dumping
them out at a screen saying they're already a member and can't register to
be a volunteer. No email is sent to the volunteers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx address,
and no feedback is given so that the user is notified that his application
has been basically tossed into the ether. (Please note that this is HTML
code that any web developer worth a darn could do in less than a day.) We
are losing lots of valuable volunteers each month because of the lack of a
web page.
2. Implement ftp protocol for book submissions and validations.
3. Add correctly codeed standards compliant form tags to the book submission and step 2 upload pages so they read correctly in almost all screen access software. Again, this doesn't require advanced programming to do.
4. Create a php file to update and publish a list of books that are currently in the admin queue so no one has to guess who has a book and where it is. That can be automated with some php scripts so that no one has to manually publish a list. This does not cost money for new equipment. It just takes some time and attention.
5. Bookshare volunteers need an easy and accurate way to see how much credit they have earned in a given year and should be able to transfer part or all of their credit to someone else. This would need to be done with an SQL database, and they can handle this with reliable open-source solutions.
Monica Visit my blog at: http://plumlipstick.livejournal.com
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