Assuming the worst about human nature, I think the system would be more robust if it was a simple 0 to 100% rating, and if the "gravity" of a user's vote was a function of their contributions (quality and quantity) in that language. Youtube can never do something like this, but Tatoeba's structure would allow it.

This way, anyone could vote. For example, if twenty people all downrated a specific (say, French) sentence just to be nasty (let's say it was making light of the Bible, and they were all very pious Christians), but had no contributions in French, their votes would have 0 effect on the rating. This would put a natural feedback on bad voting behavior, and would automatically give weight to "good voters" (i.e. "good contributors").

Quick word on the idea of a rating system:

It's good, but I'm hoping it'll have a trusted_user filter, or something of the sort. If not, it could become a mess like, say, YouTube, where completely unrelated things like boredom and political ambitions lead to total havoc.

Just taking (my beloved) Uighur as an example... If this website became relatively known to a large group of patriotic Chinese (or even anti-Muslims), there might be people who would just go and downrate Uighur sentences because they are Uighur. It sounds silly to bring this up here, but I've seen it happen on YouTube with perfectly good videos (and comments).

Just putting that out there in case the rating system is aimed to be available to ANY registered user in the future...

You make a very good argument.

Perhaps a quota on sentences/day that increases as your "trust level" goes up in a particular language?

On a different note, a quota would also help deal with Tatoeba binging and the high sentence birth to sentence correction ratio.

@xtofu: I understand, but disagree.

"to generate foreign language sentences outside their comfort zone" would be a more suitable, though even harder to realize, goal (I think). Harder because you need honest users who will admit their own limitations.

Flat-out forbidden translating into foreign languages has two apparent drawbacks, in my opinion.

1) Certain languages (e.g. Uighur, Uzbek, Tartar, Serbian, and others) would have no active (or any) contributors.

2) For a language learner, to put forth a *correct* translation in a foreign language, with the feeling that you've contributed to a community in the process, is a very good feeling, and an excellent supplement to book/class study (I do not mention spoken skills, since those are not yet very present at Tatoeba). To take this feeling away, and to say "no, you should not translate into languages that you are not completely proficient in"... kills a lot of the magic of this website. There should be no reason why a beginner-level student should not be allowed to translate beginner-level sentences.

I doubt you would disagree with me on this. The real problem that you mention, I think, is when people try to take on higher levels...

Not in the least. I just love this stuff.

For future note, since exchanges with you seem to go on endlessly, I am limiting any future replies to your comments to one/day :-)

Big Brother, I can deal with him. But Big Brother SacredCeltic... 真的没办法。。。

With all due respect, I think they both had valid points, though.

Sentences DO show up on the front page as soon as they're added/corrected, and people who are on here a lot (i.e. the mods), will automatically tell you to add a dot, etc. as soon as they see it. It's a reflex. It really is nothing personal. I've done it too. Yea, it kinda feels dumb to correct people on such simple things, but those are standards.

Regarding your attitude... I really don't know you and so can't judge, but it does come off as aggressive and disrespectful if one had to judge by the posts. Maybe not to you, but it does create friction for a lot of us... Which is not productive for the group as a whole. I've no comments on the "trolling", personally.

One ought to be careful with what they put in their profiles, eh...? Especially when people like you are ready to bring personal details into these (kinda pointless) debates.

Actually, I'm currently logging in from a tiny oasis town in Xinjiang. Just came back from a small Uighur restaurant where we tried (my Uighur is still not very good, but I'm working on it) to discuss a whole number of things - some of which bordered on the things you brought up and which I probably shouldn't post here since the internet is monitored (damn imperialism...). But my activities are no business of yours, either. I just wanted to fend off this "Russo-USian" image you cast on me.

I like it. I say we reserve these as user names for when we join sacredceltic's translation project website.

No, no lessons. I was just curious, since this is something I have a passion for (and probably a number of people on this site, as well). I just wanted to know if your energy had been put into things other than internet posts.

So we've got Pit_Bull, Lesson_Giver, and... I think we need a concise and witty name for sysko as well ;-)

Given your passion for anti-imperialism, sacredceltic, you must have done quite a lot of work in support of these minority groups around the world. I, for one, am very curious to hear about them...

What's there to debate about the flag system? It's the most clear-cut, intuitive way to designate languages. Of course there are flaws, but I doubt you could make anything perfect without sacrificing the wonderful simplicity of the current set-up.

Of course you could design a symbolic set where every language is perfectly matched to every icon one-to-one in a politically correct manner, but then no one, except the hardcore linguists (if even), will understand the majority of the designations.

Minority groups that have their own flags/banners should have them used out of respect. If they don't, something should be made for them (out of respect). In that case, most people won't recognize the "flags" anyway, and so they could be more liberally put together.

Regarding British/American, that's a tough call. Culturally, it should be Britain, but by number of speakers it should be the U.S. It's really a question of what country most people first think of when they think of the English language (and that's abstract, and probably better decided by a poll).

This can be a pain for non-trusted users whose new language is autodetected as something else, though...

I agree. I also liked the old version better.

Just me? You mean, it works for you?

Because the problem started last night for me. And it still exists...

I type "new" into the search box and get nothing...

Is this a random breakdown that comes and goes, by any chance?

It's just a pain, cause I don't want to add repeats, but now I can't even check which ones would be repeats or not...

Is there an issue with the search right now? I've tried searching for very simple words, like "new", and I get no results.

Random Tag Suggestion for French Contributors:

This probably won't mean much for native speakers, but out of personal experience, I feel like a "passé simple" tag could be really useful at some point down the road. The reason being (again, this is only out of personal experience) that this is something that classes often skim over, leaving students woefully unprepared for when they see it used.

I'll mark them as I see them, I suppose, but if other contributors could as well, it might prove to be useful later (once Tatoeba becomes super popular and French teachers begin to send their students here for extra practice :-)

Strange errors on 413554 and 413553... (could the mods check?)

The view became messed up once the sentences were tagged.

Or there could just be one audio, but the non-Shtooka ones would have a warning sign next to them (or something of the sort), until they're replaced...