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**Renaming of the "collection" feature**
There has been suggestions to rename the "collection" feature into "ratings".
Cf. https://github.com/Tatoeba/tatoeba2/issues/859
After giving it some more thoughts though, we are not convinced that "ratings" would be the most appropriate name.
Cf. https://github.com/Tatoeba/tatoeba2/pull/2091
I personally think "proofreading" would fit better for the direction where we would like this feature to go to.
For the context, when it was named "collection", there was another idea behind this feature: that each user could build their own personal corpus of sentences and they would proofread sentences along the way. You could technically choose to have a sentence in your collection that has an error, but you still add it because the sentence itself has some value to you. It just has to be corrected. However, time has shown that there is no strong desire or need for users to build personal corpora and the feature is a lot more used as a tool for quality control.
Do you agree that "proofreading" would be a suitable new name for this feature? Or do you have a better idea?
>Do you agree that "proofreading" would be a suitable new name for this feature? Or do you have a better idea?
Yes, I agree completely.
I translated it as "Reviews" into German for the German user interface because I found "collections" misleading (making it hard for people to understand what it was being used for).
I like "ratings" best and "reviews" second best.
Proofreading is about not only indicating the quality of text, but marking it up to indicate how it should be improved. That's not what this feature provides.
When I see a sentence that I think should be improved, I generally leave a comment containing the current text and my suggested replacement. That's what a proofreader does. I generally only use the checkmark/question mark/exclamation mark feature in two situations:
(1) The process of suggesting an improvement has come to a dead end, such as when the sentence sounds unnatural but it's too hard to fix, or when the owner responds aggressively to comments. In such a case, I use a question mark or exclamation mark to indicate that I consider the sentence problematic.
(2) A non-native speaker writes a sentence and asks for a native check. I use a checkmark to indicate that I think the sentence is fine.
I think either "rating" or "review" does the best job of describing this action.
Actually, I translated it as "ratings" (Bewertungen). 🙂
My concern with "rating" is that when I think of rating, I think of the system that is widely used to rate apps, products, restaurants, etc.
I would like this "collection" feature to make it out of the beta phase one day and my hope is that people don't associate it to something similar as rating products and services, and don't, for instance, rate sentences just to express support (or dislike) for the sentence owner.
When I gave it second thoughts, I felt the only healthy way to use this feature is for proofreading. It is true that the feature as it is now, only offers a way to mark sentences. But the feature is not complete and indicating how the sentence can be improved could be part of its evolution. For instance, when you click "not OK", you could have a form to add your suggested improvement and wouldn't have to go to the sentence's page for that.
But even as it is, the feature can be used for proofreading already. You can mark a sentence as "not OK" as a way to have a summary of the sentences where you posted a comment to suggested a correction. You could technically go to your list of comments for that, but it wouldn't be easy to see which ones have been indeed fixed. Whereas if you marked it as "not OK", you can see it from the "Outdated ratings".
Technically, you could download the users_sentences.csv provided on the Downloads page in order to create a list of sentences to proofread next. You would be able to know which sentences have already been proofread (and by who), so you can exclude from your list sentences that have been proofread by people you trust.
As for the "unsure" mark, it can be used for sentences where you have doubts whether it is correct or not and you are not able to find an answer, or need more time to find the answer. After all, we don't know everything about our own language.
First, we can do our best to ensure that the "healhty way" is used. Write a wiki article, add it to the functionality page, etc.
Second, whatever the name, if people want to twist the function to "express support or swift attacks" to another user, they will do it anyway. There's not much we can do to prevent it. Up to us to avoid giving credit to the action. For example, avoid adding rating bias in the search, do not consider sentences with more ratings better, etc.
> whatever the name, if people want to twist the function to "express support
> or swift attacks" to another user, they will do it anyway
Yes, that's clear, but that's not exactly what I'm concerned about. It's one thing to have very stubborn people who will care for their personal needs above everything else and will twist features to fit these needs no matter what, and it's another thing to have cooperative people who just misinterpreted the feature because the name was ambiguous to them.
If you have feature that is called "Like" and if you have a feature that is called "Bookmark" your choice will be different. It will make little sense for you to "Like" an article that makes you angry, but it makes sense that you "Bookmark" it.
Both features can provide the exact same service: just a page where you can see all the articles you liked/bookmarked, but the name influences how you use the feature.
At the end of the day, we can obviously go with any name and write documentation or add some info/tips about the feature on the website itself to clarify what it means. But we can avoid a lot of headache by choosing a good name.
My post above was meant to share my personal interpretation of "ratings" and the possible drawbacks of going for this name. But I do not know if people generally understand "ratings" the same way I do.
Renaming "collections" to "ratings" or "reviews" would still be an good improvement because it is pretty clear that no one uses this feature to build a collection, it is only used to rate/review sentences.
Lisäksi, juuri kukaan ei lue ohjeita, eivätkä ne vaikuta suoraan suurten joukkojen käytökseen.
Something like "correct" or "correctness" might discourage rating sentences one disagrees with.
Some other words, not so great I think, just for the sake of brainstorming.
Marks
Valuation
Assessment
Approval
For now, my preference goes to reviews and proofreading.
Some more brainstorming ideas.
quality
correctness
judgment
accuracy
appraisal
evaluation
good-or-not
proofreading (TRANG's idea)
My preference would be "rating", since I might say "I rated it OK" or "I gave it an OK rating."
I wouldn't say "I reviewed it OK", "I proofread it OK" or "I gave it an OK proofreading."
The word "review" could also be used for leaving comments on apps and products, so this word would have the same problem that TRANG mentioned above for "rating."
Personally, I only use the "OK" rating to let members know that the sentence is OK and ignore the other two ratings.
The "not OK" rating is something I don't use, since if something isn't OK, it might become so after leaving a comment.
There is a possibility that some members would not rate a grammatically-correct and natural-sounding sentence OK if the sentence was not factually correct or if they felt that the sentence was vulgar, pornographic, archaic, old-fashioned or otherwise not appropriate for their own use. I'm not sure this is really a problem since that's what professional proofreaders do.
Not rating something OK is fine.
Rating something not-OK because one disagrees with the sentiment in the sentence would slightly undermine the quality of the database. However, it is also something that can not really be avoided; what one can do is make it unintuitive and so only used by people committed to waging an ideological war.
+1
I believe you can have any reasons you wish to ignore certain sentences which are perfectly fine.
To add to CK's list, other common reasons could be: sentences from certain users you ignore for any reason; sentences with names or words you dislike. That doesn't sound as "professional" and the reasons listed by CK, but I see no issues with that.
I like "reviews".
"Reviews" would have the advantage that this name is already used as the title of the section on the sentence's page. So at least that string won't need to be changed.
I think what we are doing is rating sentences on a 2-value scale, OK or not OK, with the 3rd option being "unsure" which is like "undecided" on an opinion poll.
define:rate
https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Arate
* assign a standard or value to (something) according to a particular scale.
define:review
https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Areview
* assess (something) formally with the intention of instituting change if necessary.
* write a critical appraisal of (a book, play, film, etc.) for publication in a newspaper or magazine.
define:rating
https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Arating
* a classification or ranking of someone or something based on a comparative assessment of their quality, standard, or performance.
I don't really have a strong opinion on renaming this feature, but I'd like to suggest that it be explained in a prominent place that these ratings only pertain to a particular sentence and not its translations.