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Glossary-building KudoZ (GBK): a new kind of KudoZ question
Thread poster: Enrique Cavalitto
Mirra_
Mirra_
Italy
Local time: 21:15
English to Italian
+ ...
thank you... Dec 5, 2008


I had a closer look at this question and found that two sentences belonging to the same text in the same source document were pasted in the box corresponding to one. Both sentences have the same link in common. In short, the answerer pasted too much in the box but the control worked properly (a link related to that content).

Regards,
Enrique



...very much, Enrique for checking it)

kind regards
Paola


 
Laureana Pavon
Laureana Pavon  Identity Verified
Uruguay
Local time: 17:15
Member (2007)
English to Spanish
+ ...

MODERATOR
Not sure if this is the right forum... Dec 8, 2008

... but I just saw the most ridiculous Glossary Building KudoZ question (English-Spanish)

The glossary building team has chosen the term "Telecommuting", which is in fact a very common term and I think all of us ProZ.com users know what it means and would probably have no trouble translating as it is a part of the very nature of our work.

Which brings me to the ridiculous aspect of the question:

"English to Spanish translations [PRO]
Social Sciences
... See more
... but I just saw the most ridiculous Glossary Building KudoZ question (English-Spanish)

The glossary building team has chosen the term "Telecommuting", which is in fact a very common term and I think all of us ProZ.com users know what it means and would probably have no trouble translating as it is a part of the very nature of our work.

Which brings me to the ridiculous aspect of the question:

"English to Spanish translations [PRO]
Social Sciences - Human Resources
Additional field(s): Social Science, Sociology, Ethics, etc."

My goodness, those specializing Ethics are better qualified to provide/grade replies than people such as myself who have been telecommuting for years?

If this is what these questions are going to be used for, then frankly I think they're a complete waste of time.

I think that these terms should be chosen/targeted more carefully.

Just my two cents.

Cheers!

Laureana

[Edited at 2008-12-08 15:55 GMT]
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Adele Oliveri
Adele Oliveri  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 21:15
Member (2007)
English to Italian
+ ...
more on "telecommuting" in the English > Italian pair Dec 12, 2008

Hi

I want to bring to your attention another problem that has surfaced about the "telecommuting" term in the EN > IT pair. Two aswers were suggested: "telelavoro", which got 2 "Yes" and 1 "No", and "telependolarismo", which got 1 "Yes".

So while both terms got 1 net agreement, "telelavoro" was selected as the best answer based on the fact that it got two "Yes".

I don't know whether this was intended or it is only a bug, however, if this is the chosen appr
... See more
Hi

I want to bring to your attention another problem that has surfaced about the "telecommuting" term in the EN > IT pair. Two aswers were suggested: "telelavoro", which got 2 "Yes" and 1 "No", and "telependolarismo", which got 1 "Yes".

So while both terms got 1 net agreement, "telelavoro" was selected as the best answer based on the fact that it got two "Yes".

I don't know whether this was intended or it is only a bug, however, if this is the chosen approach for selecting answers, then it makes no sense to allow "No" reviews at all, since they have no influence on the final choice.

(Mind you, the answer selected was mine, so I am not complaining that my answer was not chosen, quite the contrary)

I think this needs to be sorted out, otherwise the whole peer review mechanisms becomes meaningless.

Thanks for your kind attention

Adele
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Enrique Cavalitto
Enrique Cavalitto  Identity Verified
Argentina
Local time: 17:15
Member (2006)
English to Spanish
TOPIC STARTER
Thanks a lot for reporting this! Dec 12, 2008

Adele Oliveri wrote:

I want to bring to your attention another problem that has surfaced about the "telecommuting" term in the EN > IT pair. Two aswers were suggested: "telelavoro", which got 2 "Yes" and 1 "No", and "telependolarismo", which got 1 "Yes".

So while both terms got 1 net agreement, "telelavoro" was selected as the best answer based on the fact that it got two "Yes".

I don't know whether this was intended or it is only a bug, however, if this is the chosen approach for selecting answers, then it makes no sense to allow "No" reviews at all, since they have no influence on the final choice.

(Mind you, the answer selected was mine, so I am not complaining that my answer was not chosen, quite the contrary)

I think this needs to be sorted out, otherwise the whole peer review mechanisms becomes meaningless.



Dear Adele,

Thanks a lot for reporting this. One of our developers investigated the issue and found a problem that had been previously undetected by us. The question was passed to the proper condition (selection) and the error was corrected.

I apologize for the inconveniences. Thanks again!
Enrique


 
Adele Oliveri
Adele Oliveri  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 21:15
Member (2007)
English to Italian
+ ...
Thank you for solving it so quickly! Dec 12, 2008

Enrique wrote:

Dear Adele,

Thanks a lot for reporting this. One of our developers investigated the issue and found a problem that had been previously undetected by us. The question was passed to the proper condition (selection) and the error was corrected.



Dear Enrique

thank you for solving the issue so quickly. I am glad the question was re-opened (although admittedly this was against my interest)

Have a nice week-end

Adele


 
Adele Oliveri
Adele Oliveri  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 21:15
Member (2007)
English to Italian
+ ...
Additional feedback from the EN > IT combination Dec 19, 2008

Dear Proz staff

Following my previous post on December 3, here is some further feedback about the GBK experience, based on discussions with some members of the EN > IT community. As you will see from the signatures at the end, this is a "collective" post written together and discussed with the undersigned, who share the concerns illustrated in what follows. I am simply posting it on behalf of the group.

We are all active participants of the Kudoz system and most of us h
... See more
Dear Proz staff

Following my previous post on December 3, here is some further feedback about the GBK experience, based on discussions with some members of the EN > IT community. As you will see from the signatures at the end, this is a "collective" post written together and discussed with the undersigned, who share the concerns illustrated in what follows. I am simply posting it on behalf of the group.

We are all active participants of the Kudoz system and most of us have had a go at the GBK questions, providing answers, peer comments and linguistic discussions, and all of us share the same concerns with respect to the GBK initiative. Some of those concerns were described in the post dated December 3, but we feel they have not been properly addressed so far. So here is a new list of concerns we wish to share with the community and hope to discuss with the staff.

Some terms posted in the GBK so far are very easy and can be found in any dictionary or glossary on the web. As a consequence, people simply tend to copy definitions found in Wikipedia or other easily available sources. Besides any copyright issues which may arise with some of these sites, we find such duplications of little use. We appreciate the effort to build valid glossaries, so here are a few suggestions on how to improve the GBK system:

1. An effort should be made to choose really “technical” questions. The GBK will add a lot more value if it is a repository of resources not found elsewhere.

2. Questions should be a lot more open to contribution. Anyone with a “work” interest in the field should be allowed to provide an answer. Anyone who works in the language combination should be able to peer review and participate to linguistic discussions. Bad or inappropriate answers by “non specialists” (if any) will be weeded out by means of the peer review system. Almost all the terms posted so far could have very easily been answered by non specialists. Strictly related to this is the issue of notifications - users should be allowed to receive notifications related to any GBK they wish, even those where they can't provide an answer.

3. Questions should admit more than one answer. Some terms posted in the GBK so far have no unique corresponding term in the target language. The entry form should contain an additional field for alternative translations or synonyms. Answers provided in this field will be taken into account when evaluating each entry.

4. Linguistic discussions and peer reviews should NOT be allowed during the submission phase. This will prevent early repliers from being unduly advantaged/disadvantaged by early agrees/disagrees. Moreover, early linguistic discussions can be counterproductive: on two occasions, users who were not allowed to submit answers have posted their proposed solutions in the linguistic discussion area, thus discouraging answerers from posting the same solution as an answer (for fear of being seen as "copying" someone else's suggestion).

5. Users should be allowed to search the GBK glossary and the KOG at the same time. The current system forces you to make two separate searches, and this can be very time-consuming for people making an active use of Proz resources.

6. Answers given to the GBK questions should not be given Kudoz points or should be “rewarded” in a different way. Currently users rush to answer GBKs because they hope this way to get awarded the Kudoz points. This makes sense in the Kudoz system, where requests for help need to be answered quickly as askers are often pressed for deadlines. It does NOT make much sense in the GBK system, since answers need to be thoroughly researched and meditated, with proper definitions and examples. If users think building a glossary is worthwhile, they will take part in the process even if they don’t get awarded Kudoz points.

7. Most of all, we wish to reaffirm what was stated under point f. in the previous post:

As a final suggestion, maybe it would be a lot better to implement the GBK answer interface (term + definition + references, etc.) for the KudoZ section, dropping GBKs all together. If answerers were "forced" to conform to a given standard when answering questions (providing definition, providing links and references, etc.), you would get a "cleaner" KudoZ section which would automatically generate nice accurate glossaries.


And, of course:

8. As opposed to building a glossary from scratch, why don't we consider cleaning up the KOG? There are zillions of entries there, and a properly cleaned up KOG would be an excellent starting point for a multilingual glossary-building exercise. Several proposals have already been made in the past about this, but regretfully they seem to have gone unheeded to a large extent.

All of us are very active participants in the Kudoz system and strongly believe in the importance of sharing and cooperation. For this reasons, many of us have been discussing the GBK system with a view to improve it and make the effort worthwhile. Many of these discussions have been taking place, perhaps inappropriately, in the "linguistic discussion area" of the GBK questions and, lately, several of those entries have been removed. While we appreciate that the "linguistic discussion area" should only be used for the purpose of linguistic discussion, we also think that during this initial phase a lot more flexibility should be allowed. After all, several ideas about how to improve the GBK system are often sparked by what we see when answering specific questions, and there is no better place to discuss them than the on the linguistic discussion area itself. Additionally, at least a couple of the entries removed were strictly linguistic, and some of them were mixed (i.e. contained both linguistic and GBK-related comments).

We have noticed that several concerns have been expressed, in this forum and elsewhere, about the GBK project. We think that such concerns deserve to be discussed and debated, in order to keep developing and expanding this great online community of translators. Should these concerns go unanswered, we fear that many users may feel alienated and stop participating altogether in such initiatives, thus causing them to grind to a halt.

We do hope that this post will help spark an interesting discussion about making the GBK system a useful tool for everyone.
Thanks,

Maria Luisa Dell'Orto
doba
Valeria Faber
daria fedele
Maria Rosa Fontana
Laura Gentili
luskie
Monica M.
Mirra_
Adele Oliveri
pataflo
Alessandra Renna
Gabriella Tindiglia
Giuseppina Vecchia
Zea_Mays
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Enrique Cavalitto
Enrique Cavalitto  Identity Verified
Argentina
Local time: 17:15
Member (2006)
English to Spanish
TOPIC STARTER
Excellent feedback! Dec 19, 2008

Dear Adele and other members who contributed in the post above,

Thanks a lot for your excellent feedback. There is much food for thought there. We will evaluate and discuss each of the points you raise. The current implementation was partially shaped by feedback from members in the first five language pairs, and it should keep growing and evolving based on present and future feedback.

Regards,
Enrique


 
Monica M.
Monica M.  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 21:15
Member (2005)
English to Italian
+ ...
Technical problem with "disagree" function Dec 23, 2008

Dear Enrique,

Since the "neutral" peer comment is no longer available on GBK, I used the "disagree" function to tell a colleague (Alessandra Renna) proper examples were missing from her GBK entry on "co-morbidtity":

http://www.proz.com/kudoz/english_to_italian/medical_general/2999713-co_morbidity.html

Now that
... See more
Dear Enrique,

Since the "neutral" peer comment is no longer available on GBK, I used the "disagree" function to tell a colleague (Alessandra Renna) proper examples were missing from her GBK entry on "co-morbidtity":

http://www.proz.com/kudoz/english_to_italian/medical_general/2999713-co_morbidity.html

Now that Alessandra has entered the examples needed to comply with the GBK format, I seem unable to delete my disagree. Am I doing something wrong or is there a bug in the system?

Also, could you please reinstate the "neutral" peer comment in GBK too? This way, we can tell a colleague something is missing from his/her entry without unduly penalizing him/her.

Thanks a lot in advance for your time and trouble!

Best,

Monica
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Enrique Cavalitto
Enrique Cavalitto  Identity Verified
Argentina
Local time: 17:15
Member (2006)
English to Spanish
TOPIC STARTER
Thanks a lot for your feedback! Dec 23, 2008

Monica M. wrote:

Dear Enrique,

Since the "neutral" peer comment is no longer available on GBK, I used the "disagree" function to tell a colleague (Alessandra Renna) proper examples were missing from her GBK entry on "co-morbidtity":

http://www.proz.com/kudoz/english_to_italian/medical_general/2999713-co_morbidity.html

Now that Alessandra has entered the examples needed to comply with the GBK format, I seem unable to delete my disagree. Am I doing something wrong or is there a bug in the system?

Also, could you please reinstate the "neutral" peer comment in GBK too? This way, we can tell a colleague something is missing from his/her entry without unduly penalizing him/her.

Thanks a lot in advance for your time and trouble!

Best,

Monica


Dear Monica,

You were right, there was a bug in the disagree feature, already solved.

The "neutral" feature was not included in the GBK system because peer grading is used as a voting feature and a neutral vote does not make much sense.

On the other hand I see the logic of your requirement, to have an area to leave messages to the answerer in cases like this. We will look into providing an alternative solution.

Thanks again!
Enrique


 
Enrique Cavalitto
Enrique Cavalitto  Identity Verified
Argentina
Local time: 17:15
Member (2006)
English to Spanish
TOPIC STARTER
New message implemented Dec 23, 2008

Monica M. wrote:

Also, could you please reinstate the "neutral" peer comment in GBK too? This way, we can tell a colleague something is missing from his/her entry without unduly penalizing him/her.



Dear Monica,

A new feature has been added: if you are allowed to provide a peer-comment, then you may now post a note to the answerer by using a link provided at the bottom of the answer.





The messages posted will be visible above the voting area of the question:



Regards,
Enrique


 
Monica M.
Monica M.  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 21:15
Member (2005)
English to Italian
+ ...
Thanks a lot for the "Note to answerer" feature Dec 24, 2008

Dear Enrique,

Thanks a lot for implementing this new feature so quickly! It's really useful (in my view) and certainly adds to the GBK experience.

Happy Holidays!

Monica


 
Alessandra Renna
Alessandra Renna
Local time: 21:15
English to Italian
+ ...
note to the answerer Dec 24, 2008

Enrique wrote:

Monica M. wrote:

Also, could you please reinstate the "neutral" peer comment in GBK too? This way, we can tell a colleague something is missing from his/her entry without unduly penalizing him/her.



Dear Monica,

A new feature has been added: if you are allowed to provide a peer-comment, then you may now post a note to the answerer by using a link provided at the bottom of the answer.





The messages posted will be visible above the voting area of the question:



Regards,
Enrique


Well done!


 
Enrique Cavalitto
Enrique Cavalitto  Identity Verified
Argentina
Local time: 17:15
Member (2006)
English to Spanish
TOPIC STARTER
Partial answer to your feedback Dec 24, 2008

Some partial replies to your valuable feedback:


Adele Oliveri wrote:
1. An effort should be made to choose really “technical” questions. The GBK will add a lot more value if it is a repository of resources not found elsewhere.


This is likely to improve when the questions start being created by specialists. By the way, any English native specialist willing to participate in the creation of GBK questions is kindly invited to let us know by means of a support request..

Adele Oliveri wrote:
5. Users should be allowed to search the GBK glossary and the KOG at the same time. The current system forces you to make two separate searches, and this can be very time-consuming for people making an active use of Proz resources.


This request was very reasonable and it was just implemented. You will notice a new option in the KudoZ search console:



By selecting the option "Glossary-building questions" you will also be shown terms in the GBK glossary. If course there are not many terms there yet, but on the other hand the GBK glossary can also be searched between target languages (for instance from Romanian into Chinese).


[quote]Adele Oliveri wrote:
7. Most of all, we wish to reaffirm what was stated under point f. in the previous post:

As a final suggestion, maybe it would be a lot better to implement the GBK answer interface (term + definition + references, etc.) for the KudoZ section, dropping GBKs all together. If answerers were "forced" to conform to a given standard when answering questions (providing definition, providing links and references, etc.), you would get a "cleaner" KudoZ section which would automatically generate nice accurate glossaries.


The main objective of the normal "help" KudoZ is to provide help to the asker. Forcing askers and answerers into a more complex standard would be detrimental to this objective. This is why a new KudoZ category was created where quality of glossary is a key factor and the asker's needs and speed are not.

Regards,
Enrique


 
Thomas Johansson
Thomas Johansson  Identity Verified
Peru
Local time: 15:15
English to Swedish
+ ...
some feedback Dec 24, 2008

Ok, GBK sounds like an interesting project, and for all its current shortcomings, by all means give it a try and work on it (as long as it remains completely optional for members to participate in or see it in its current format).

However, I have some concrete feedback:

- GBK questions currently take too long time to answer. (The interface is too complicated, asks for too many things.) I have tried to answer one or two GBK questions but found that it took too much of my
... See more
Ok, GBK sounds like an interesting project, and for all its current shortcomings, by all means give it a try and work on it (as long as it remains completely optional for members to participate in or see it in its current format).

However, I have some concrete feedback:

- GBK questions currently take too long time to answer. (The interface is too complicated, asks for too many things.) I have tried to answer one or two GBK questions but found that it took too much of my time. The position I have been forced to take is not to participate as long as the current interface/process remains.

Maybe an idea would be to make it possible to gradually build each answer on a community basis. I.e. one person might answer with a translation, another person might later like to add a reference to a web site or an example sentence, etc. I.e. the data for each translation is built up piecemeal and gradually over time by a variety of contributors. This would make the whole glossary-building process quicker and give it a much stronger community feel. (This is just one more of my many, many GREAT IDEAS that I have suggested to proz.com over the years that will be ignored.)

- Web site references are currently completely overrated. Often, there are no readily available web references for a given term or it would take an eternity to find them. The result is that even if you know the answer (i.e. one acceptable translation), you still cannot submit it if you lack a web site reference.

This problem will be especially critical for small languages that have very little overall presence on the internet. Even for reasonably large internet languages like Swedish, it is often difficult to find (correct) web references for many Kudoz questions.
(Maybe instead of testing GBK on large languages like Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese you should try it out on languages with less internet presence like Maya, Haussa, Slovenian, etc., before you settle on a specific interface/process implementation.)

Thomas
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Zea_Mays
Zea_Mays  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 21:15
Member (2009)
English to German
+ ...
.............. Dec 26, 2008

Hello,

I hope you enjoy your Holidays!

I've signed Adele's post, and want to highlight two points which I consider relevant:
7. (...)
As a final suggestion, maybe it would be a lot better to implement the GBK answer interface (term + definition + references, etc.) for the KudoZ section, dropping GBKs all together. If answerers were "forced" to conform to a given standard when answering questions (providing definition, providing links and references, etc.), you would get a "cleaner" KudoZ section which would automatically generate nice accurate glossaries.

(...)
8. As opposed to building a glossary from scratch, why don't we consider cleaning up the KOG? There are zillions of entries there, and a properly cleaned up KOG would be an excellent starting point for a multilingual glossary-building exercise. Several proposals have already been made in the past about this, but regretfully they seem to have gone unheeded to a large extent.
I wouldn't be afraid to make Kudoz rules a little stricter - and I think many members would agree.
Why don't build a team of volunteers to cleaning up the KOG? There is a lot of people with excellent linguistic and technical skills in here!
I also agree with Thomas Johansson - the Wikipedia project builds on a cooperation model.
gradually build each answer on a community basis


And one issue I already pointed out: what's about the copyright rules? Texts are not common property just because they are on the web.
If you want to build a separate glossary, and considering the size it could be have, probably you have to ask the authors or owners for agreement.

Copyright rules: http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html
Could I be sued for using somebody else's work? How about quotes or samples?
If you use a copyrighted work without authorization, the owner may be entitled to bring an infringement action against you. There are circumstances under the fair use doctrine where a quote or a sample may be used without permission. However, in cases of doubt, the Copyright Office recommends that permission be obtained.

"Fair use": http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html


My 2 cents for today.


 
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Glossary-building KudoZ (GBK): a new kind of KudoZ question






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