> "The @NNC tag implies that the sentence may not be natural speech and any change to it shouldn't change the meaning. In cases where the change is great enough to warrant reviewing the other sentences, add "@check translation" to the linked sentences and a comment about the change to the (now) formerly @NNC-ed sentence."

I would argue (and have argued :-) that these are more closely linked than that, because it is very easy to change the meaning and translation accuracy of a sentence while making it more "natural" (in fact, both you and CK almost fell into this trap just recently on one of sysko's sentences - but thankfully it was his sentence and so he was able to explain the meaning).

My biggest complaint is mainly with sentences where things are so, for lack of better word, "weird" that I don't know which natural-sounding variant to propose because I don't know the languages it's linked to. If it's the owner who places the tag, it's fine, because I can ask and they will clarify what exactly they're not sure about (in my experience, the native checker does not always get the meaning of the other language on the first try). When the sentence is orphaned, I can of course leave a comment, but there's no guarantee that it won't fade into oblivion (although, given blay_paul's diligence, it generally doesn't).

Eh... That's the fate those languages suffer.

Concerning "Needs Native Check" tags:

Can there be an unofficial rule of etiquette to leave a comment when you tag sentences that aren't your own? I find it particularly hard to look at a sentence that's been NNC-tagged but doesn't have an owner, because I don't know who to discuss the changes with. It's also not clear what might need changing sometimes, since the sentences will be linked to multiple languages, and unless I know them, I am completely in the dark with regard to how my suggestion may change the translation accuracy.

> Ca relève du syndrome de Stockholm: A force de se faire taper par son ravisseur, on finit par adopter son point de vue.

Vous n'arretez pas de me faire rire... ;-)

> It was not a transliteration, it was a sentence rewritten from (de facto) standart script into a (de jure) standard script. Both Latin and Cyrillic Uzbek are widely used.


Wait, why isn't this still a transliteration?

I generally agree with Demetrius here. However, with Uzbek, we don't actually lose much with the deletions.

After you had noted that Cyrillic to Latin was easy, but not necessarily vice-versa, I went ahead and changed all my Latin Uzbek sentences into Cyrillic ones. Also, porfiriy only contributed in the Cyrillic as well, if I'm not wrong. Once the transliteration thing is up, then all the Latin will be recovered.

Although, I think boracasli might have entered some Uzbek sentences in Latin only... True, one might question the authenticity, but still...

Thank you for bringing this up on the wall. I've gotten numerous comments on my sentences because of this, and so maybe it's better to just put the explanation here for everyone to see.

Yes, there are numerous sentences under "wrong flags". This is not a mistake. This is intentional. All the sentences you have mentioned are either in Bosnian or Croatian. Because those languages are not yet available on Tatoeba, there is no correct flag to put them under. If you look at the sentence tags, you'll notice that all of the sentences you highlighted are already marked "Bosnian" or "Croatian". They will be fixed and put under the proper flags once these languages become available.

> I'm turkish, I hate UK and USA.

Ne...?

I remember the days (just some 2-3 weeks ago) when there were more Uighur sentences than Ukranian ones... Now it'll probably take at least a year for them to reach the number that the Ukranian ones have now... When is there going to be a surprise mass surge of Uighur contributors, I wonder?

Looks like it's time to change the name "Tatoeba" to something more Anglo...! :-)

@boracasli:

I don't think Russian needs a transliteration. I don't know of anywhere in the world where Latin Russian is used... Or of anyone who uses it for cases outside of them not having a keyboard.

Transliterated Russian... Eww...

(Strangely enough,) I agree with sc here. In my personal opinion (and based on a strong hunch), I don't think any website can expect to gain widespread success without being able to efficiently regulate bad user behavior - even when such behavior is widespread.

In other words, setting user guidelines and saying things like "you should not produce too many variants", "you should not translate into languages other than the ones you're native-level in" etc., will work when the community is still small, like it is now (though still with limited success, as is being witnessed now). As it grows, it'll be naturally harder for the moderators to keep good track of everything and the quality of the personal interaction will be diluted, inevitably.

As sacredceltic says, it is mainly a matter of querying and presentation methods. There needs to be a robust system in place to handle all the inefficiency of the users, because the users will always be inefficient. Unfortunately, this just means more work for the programmers and less for us normal users...

@boracasli:

If you would like a native check, please leave a comment on the sentence. There's no need to post it on the public wall.

I'm going to use this space to again push forward the idea of an optimized algorithm that invites users to review sentences/translations that they are most fit to review via a popup sidebar ;-)

Personally, the two are close enough for me. "You should" is where things change...

I say May 5, 2011.

Anyway, maybe we can start a betting pool...

No, I still hold that it should be. The word "exponential" shouldn't be taken to mean that it follows some sort of super rapid growth. It just means that when taking all the data of Tatoeba's growth, from the day of its inception, plotting that data, and fitting the curve, the exponential fit works better than anything else. That's why there were so few contributions for such a long time, and then the steady growth in the past half-year or so.

Again, bursts play no role here. The fit ignores the bursts, since it looks at the entire two years.

10000/day is exactly what you might get on day 1023 (you did the calc, didn't you?)... Well, you have almost a year to build up the server.

Then we'll probably be there in nine months.