So a "Tatoeba Viewer" of sorts :-)

Actually, it wouldn't be too difficult to set up a quick website intended as a tester for a rating system.

We would need to:

(1) collect a list of users who would want to participate
(2) create a second set of accounts for these users (since we wouldn't assume to have access to everyone's Tatoeba password)
(3) agree on a rating algorithm
(4) set up a basic page that calls different Tatoeba sentences and translations, and then lets the testers rate them

(1) and (2) are cake. (3) would need some discussion - I proposed an algorithm in my January post, but this could be changed/refined. (4) I see as one day of hard work for one intermediate web programmer, if things (particularly, interfacing with the Tatoeba sentence database) go smoothly.

At first, it could be a separate website dedicated solely to rating the Tatoeba corpus.

Any takers?

But then that site would become the new Tatoeba, wouldn't it? :-)

Actually, how easy would it be to copy Tatoeba and to develop it independently? I've discussed this a little bit with Alan, since it seems like the people capable of developing the current site are too busy to do it...

Of course, I'm a hypocrite here since there's a lot I would love to improve about Tatoeba but probably don't have the time to do it, either, heh. But some people must have time... right?

Yes.

You could also have a tab to switch between "sort by quality" and "sort by relevance" (like Youtube :-)

Yea, I've also thought about this option. The biggest inconvenience that immediately strikes me is that completely new visitors to the site wouldn't be able to see sentence ratings without setting up a script or accessing an auxiliary site. In (my version of) the ideal world, a random internet user would stumble on a Tatoeba sentence and have a number next to it that somehow reflected its reliability. Then he/she could say, for example, "okay, 95% is pretty good, I'll go ahead and assume this is right and use it for whatever I need it for". That way this site could be *useful* to the masses with at least some sort of quality claims behind its data (sentences/translations).

That said, a pilot script/site that interfaced with Tatoeba and let the users here test out a rating system prototype without making it an integral part of Tatoeba itself could also be a useful first step.

Encouraging people to contribute only in their "native language" is a good heuristic to encourage correct contributions, but it suffers from lack of rigor (like any heuristic). Certain foreign speakers may make better contributions than certain native speakers, and it would be unfair to try to stop them from doing so. As Impersonator points out, there's a lot of additional complications that may arise for different languages and language families. I could also provide other examples from my experiences on Tatoeba where the "native speaker contribution only" policy would be extremely restricting and would do more harm than good.

If you want quality on Tatoeba, you just need a simple regulation system. Users who contribute good sentences/translations should be encouraged to keep doing so and users who contibute bad sentences/translations should be discouraged. Irregardless of what their native language may be. Ratings are the most natural way to do this - you just need to design a robust karma system. But, like Alan said in another post, I think this is simply asking for too much with the current state of Tatoeba and its lack of development, unless someone wants to take things into their own hands and, I don't know, code a parallel Tatoeba where ratings/feedback can be applied to sentences.

I remember proposing something similar a while ago (in January of this year, I think). Basically, I agree that too much effort is being spent by members on low-payoff tasks. In particular with regard to manually monitoring corpus quality when an automatic rating system would be quicker, more efficient, and more statistically robust.

However, I know that a lot of users here are conservative and hesitant with respect to the idea of ratings, which is an attitude that I personally find to be irrational. It'd be great if there were someone well-versed in karma systems that could contribute to this discussion.

I can't read the admins' minds, but I would say that with money comes a lot of responsibility - i.e., when people are giving you money in hopes that you'll do something, you are morally obligated to start spending a minimum of X hours per week, month, etc. to consistently work on what users are requesting (and expecting).

On the other hand, it's a lot easier to run a site where no one gives you anything and therefore cannot demand anything in return. This way, if the admins are busy for a year and do very little work on the site, no one has the right to get angry. If you start giving them money, they no longer have that freedom to be "too busy" with other things. It's added pressure and, judging by how little the site has changed in the past few years, it's probably added pressure that the current admins simply do not want.

1) Good luck being a CM.

2) I more or less completely agree with what you wrote. The more qualified CMs there are, the better. It shouldn't matter what language they are affiliated with. In fact, I don't understand why these affiliations are now explicit - they weren't before.

Et pour gagner le respect des autres, il faut leur donner le respect qu'ils méritent.

Yes, you're right. It's British English.

My bad.

*review* formal logic

C'est un faux ami.

Is this, like, Tatoeba Commemoration Day or something? Sentence #1 is consistently being displayed on the front page for me...

Or is it a bug?

Oui, ça a du sens. Merci pour l'article.

En effet, oui :-)