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adding this as a seperate thread (instead of as an answer to one of the already exisiting ones about the topic) because I actually think it's kind of important and I don't want it to be overlooked.
a lot of people are asking for a wishlist feature for certain words, which I think is a good idea.
in addition, I would also suggest, especially for japanese with its tons and tons of orphan sentences, a wishlist for orphans to be adopted, and changed if they're not good.
this way, when someone wants to use an orphan sentence because they cannot find a specific word in a non-orphan, or because all non-orphans are very long or complicated, that orphan can be verified.
this could even be extended to a general verification wishlist, for all cases in which people for whatever reason are not sure a sentence is okay. we would have to see whether that would end up in a vast sea of requests too big for natives to handle, though.
i agree with this. Personally I'd like to see someghing similar also for orphan sentences in other languages, like English and French
yeah, I'd like it to be universal for all languages. I just mentioned japanese because it has probably the worst orphan-nonorphan ratio on tatoeba.
By TRANG on (2015-04-12 15:36) - https://tatoeba.org/eng/wall/sh...#message_22294
"You may want to fill this form:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d...LbK_8/viewform "
There's a difference between a wishlist of words and a wishlist of existing sentences. In the case of existing sentences, you can create a list and add the sentences to them. Then you can send someone a link to the list. (You could use a tag to accomplish the same goal.) There's no way to do the same thing with a list of words. However, what I do as a workaround is to create a list of sentences in my own language, English, that use the English equivalents of the target words. Then I send someone a link to that list and request that they translate the sentences in it. This has the advantage of increasing the number and coverage of sentences in English as well as in the target language. Of course, there are disadvantages to this approach. One is that the translator might not use the word that you're interested in. For this reason and others, I agree that a wishlist of words would be useful. However, until we have one, this is at least a temporary solution.
> ... this could even be extended to a general verification wishlist, for all cases in which people for whatever reason are not sure a sentence is okay. we would have to see whether that would end up in a vast sea of requests too big for natives to handle, though.
We already have a tag to serve this purpose: @needs_native_check.
The main problem, I think, is simply that we don't have enough active Japanese contributors. It won't matter if we implement a feature to request sentences to be checked and corrected, if there is no contributor with the knowledge to do it, and willing to do it.
I'm responding to trang because her comment is the farthest down the thread, but this is also a response to alan.
I think a seperate feature for this specific purpose could yield much better results than simply using tags or creating lists. maybe it's just me, but I don't have the impression that tags are perceived as very central on tatoeba, apart from the @change tag, maybe (though I have seen some really, really old @change tags that have not been taken care of so far). there are just so many of them that individual tags get lost in the mass.
as for lists, myes, maybe, but I wouldn't like to be constantly bugging people by sending them messages saying "hey, here's a list again for xth time, happy adopting!". if there were a specific feature, people on here (in case it all works out like I imagine) would see that there is a need for verification among users on tatoeba, and could just once in a while look over a few.
of course, if there are no contributors taking care of the stuff, then there's no helping it, but we'd have to see how that works out. and again, I'm only using japanese as an example, but even if it wouldn't work for japanese in the beginning, it might work for other languages, and it could also change for japanese over time, maybe if just one new contributor registers who is really willing to do it, at least for a while.
as I said, it might be just me, but personally I don't have the impression that tags and lists are very prominent features on tatoeba. maybe this could be changed by encouraging contributors (especially advanced contributors?) to help by checking sentences tagged @needs_native_check and so on, but right now, I just feel like the "verification on demand" feature could be much more prominent on tatoeba.
How do you imagine this "verification on demand" feature exactly?
Just so you know, I have some work in progress, which basically tackles the problem of quality in Tatoeba.
Cf. https://tatoeba.org/eng/wall/sh...#message_23646
I remember reading that you want to "have a dedicated system" for verifying sentences on tatoeba, but I had forgotten it again. anyway, I think it's a great goal. maybe this will help a little on the way:
for verification on demand, I would basically add a button on the top bar (maybe under the "contribute" button, but I actually think a separate, always visible button would be cool) that says something like "check/verify sentences". by clicking it, you get to a page where you can choose to display, in a specific language, sentences that have been asked to be verified (all users can do this by clicking on a button next to the "mark a favourite" and the other buttons). there you can verify sentences as good or bad (or rate them on a scale), and the user who asked for verification gets a message saying the sentence has been evaluated. there could also be an exhortation message telling people to adopt orphans on the list if and only if they're in their native language and they think they are good, or adopt and then change them if they think they're bad.
alternatively, the "sentences to be verified" button could also be grouped under a primary "wishlist" button, along with "words to be added in sentences (can't think of a good name right now)".
also, I would consider limiting the verification feature (or in fact both the verification and the "word wishlist" feature) to contributors with one of the three advanced statuses, or introducing some other "trusted user / verified native language(s)" status.
another possibility would be to introduce a more open "upvote/downvote" feature, where you can leave one up- or downvote on each sentence, and your vote weighs more heavily if you have the sentence's language as a native language in your profile? this would obviously be easy to abuse, but assuming that most people would be mature about it, this could work as well. anyway, there could either be thresholds where a sentence gets deleted at, say, a vote score of -10, and gets a "verified" mark at a score of +10 or something, but we could also simply have the score displayed and leave it at that.
(edit: added later)
you could also use the above mentioned "trusted user / etc." status to exclude their sentences from the "ask to be verified" feature, so that people won't be just clicking the button on every sentence because they want to be extra-sure, or include an "are you sure?" step on non-orphans, with a message saying that you should only ask for sentences to be verified if you have a specific reason to doubt their reliability because it creates work for other users.
these are just my ideas, but I hope you might find some of them useful.