Blocking from Term Help askers who have not graded 5-10 questions (ProZ.com suggestions)

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Blocking from Term Help askers who have not graded 5-10 questions
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Blocking from Term Help askers who have not graded 5-10 questions

Thread poster: CLS Lexi-tech

CLS Lexi-tech
Local time: 18:09
English to Italian
+ ...

Jun 8, 2001

I think this feature would prevent people from posting too many questions at the same time, as an added bonus. We just had a couple of examples in the EN>IT and GERMAN>IT community where an asker was able to post 50 questions in less than an hour and 17 questions in a few minutes.

This feature would help us \"close\" open questions without having to send reminders (I send on average 10 reminders a week) and would prevent the posting of too many questions at a time.

... See more

Rebekka Groß (X)

Local time: 23:09
English to German

Jun 11, 2001

My reply here deals with a couple of points and I will also post a separate topic for the second issue.

Is it not an exception that someone posts that many questions in such a short time? Depending on the type of translation, I have on occasion posted lots of questions and having access to ProZ and translators who might be familiar with the subject I am struggling with is great because with very tight deadlines, it is often extremely hard to do the necessary research myself.

I am not sure if it is such a good idea to block people who haven\'t graded a certain number of answers. I have not graded answers in the past because none of the answers really fit.

Would this not also cause people to grade answers just for the sake of grading them even if they don\'t use the term/expression suggested?

In fact, I just received an e-mail informing me that I hadn\'t graded 23 answers some dating back to March 1st! I was surprised because I\'m normally quite good a grading answers and immediately sat down to go through them. Despite my efforts, about a third of the answers were not suitable and I declined some of them. In other instances, I still don\'t know what the correct term would be - so what do I do in such a case. These 8 answers (or thereabouts) are still registered as ungraded.

[ This Message was edited by: on 2001-06-12 07:01 ] ▲ Collapse

eurotransl (X)
German to English
+ ...

Jun 15, 2001

Well, there are valid arguments to be raised for either side.

Rebekka is right that some of the askers would then simply grade the first answer and then get on with it.

I believe the most pressing problem right now is the fact that many school kids seem to be \"abusing\" the KudoZ system by, in some cases, uploading 20 questions in a matter of as many minutes. Perhaps ProZ could program some kind of \"time allowance\" - you are only allowed a certain number of posts within a certain period of time.

A professional translator working on a project will require, let\'s say, a handful of terms as he or she is working on it. Someone who wants to \"feed\" his entire homework for Spanish class into the ProZ system, for example, could be locked out after 5 or 6 postings - and could not return for another 12 hours, or something like that.

I understand that this too would create problems for some \"honest\" users, but it might be worth the try.

Also, the length of a KudoZ question should be limited to no more than approx. 100-150 words. There have been postings exceeding 300 words or more by people who wanted a free translation.

If you limit the number of words, you will achieve these things:

1. The asker will be forced to be concise AND precise

2. No more \"free translation\" requests.

Well, just food for thought. Yummie -

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Nikki Scott-Despaigne

Local time: 00:09
French to English

Jun 15, 2001

Sometimes context in a question requires a fair bit of space. I fail to see how using this method would prevent school kids posting their homework. It might however prevent people needing to get on with their work from doing so.

eurotransl (X)
German to English
+ ...

Jun 16, 2001

It is, indeed, a very tricky and sticky problem. How can we block out some groups without restricting legitimate users too much??

Perhaps one solution would be to require each user of KudoZ to register with ProZ. It does not take much time to register and create a profile page, but it might put off some of those kids - plus, ProZ would vet such newly created profiles and see whether the person in question is a translator or not. If not, the profile and registration could be deleted, and that \"kid\" would find \"access denied\" the next time he or she tried to feed his or her homework into the system.

But this, too, would surely create problems. I am afraid, I don\'t have a ready-made solution either.

Another option, perhaps, would be to save any KudoZ questions to the database (like postings to this forum), have them checked by a moderator and then put them \"on the air\". I do see the problem of volume here: with the flood of questions sometimes, each moderator would be hopelessly inundated and it would probably take forever for a question to go out - even the legit ones.

I am still waiting for an inspiration! ▲ Collapse

Dave Simons
Local time: 23:09
French to English

Jun 17, 2001

Perhaps one solution would be to require each user of KudoZ to register with ProZ. It does not take much time to register and create a profile page, but it might put off some of those kids - plus, ProZ would vet such newly created profiles and see whether the person in question is a translator or not.

(snip)

But this, too, would surely create problems. I am afraid, I don\'t have a ready-made solution either.

... See more

Perhaps one solution would be to require each user of KudoZ to register with ProZ. It does not take much time to register and create a profile page, but it might put off some of those kids - plus, ProZ would vet such newly created profiles and see whether the person in question is a translator or not.

(snip)

But this, too, would surely create problems. I am afraid, I don\'t have a ready-made solution either.

What do you see as a problem - restricting questions to Proz members or vetting the registrations? I think the first is a very logical move; as for the second, that clearly depends on the volume of registrations that arrive. That said, it ought not to take more than a few seconds to check that a newly-created profile is that of a bona-fide translator.

Dave.

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Silvio Picinini

United States
Local time: 15:09
English to Portuguese
+ ...

Jun 18, 2001

Two things:

The power of squashing questions exists. It is available to translators that have a certain number of KudoZ points in the pair, I believe. It is a good idea and should be used. If I see an abuse, I would squash it.

Second, a SUGGESTION, Henry: there should be a zero point to grade the question when none of the answers fits. Isn\'t that a good idea?

Jon Zuber (X)
Spanish to English
+ ...

Jun 18, 2001

It seems to me that anyone who posts KudoZ questions for any length of time and is at all particular about the answers is going to go on accumulating open questions. This is especially true in the smaller communities, where the pool of potential answerers is smaller. I think it would be unfortunate to lock people out automatically without some sort of protective mechanism, say allowing askers to close questions without selecting an answer.

If there is a block, perhaps it should be trig... See more

Hans-Bertil Karlsson (X)
Sweden
Local time: 00:09
Norwegian to Swedish
+ ...

In memoriam

Aug 16, 2001

I do agree with the idea of zero grading a question where none of the answers seems to be right. I did have one such out some times ago and felt ashame for leaving it ungraded. I ended up by grading (1) to the person who made most effort to solve my problem.

However grading (1) might mislead other people who read the answer - they might think it is correct.

Better then to grade (0), with the symbol

inst... See more

instead of

in the far right column

// Hans ▲ Collapse

gianfranco

Brazil
Local time: 19:09
Member (2001)
English to Italian
+ ...

Aug 17, 2001

I definitely agree with the proposal of limiting the number of questions posted by a single person in a day, but... a person which finds himself/herself in trouble, once in a while, with more than the fixed limit of questions, may have problems and ProZ would fail to help, just when some help is most needed.

I suggest to implement a simple tiered system.

A fair limit for new members (3-5 questions max per day) and higher limit for members that satisfy some criteria.

More points should allow for more requests per day, for example: up to 10 questions in a single day for members having 50+ KudoZ, no limit for members having 100+ KudoZ.

After all, any member having 50+ KudoZ will know the basics of the ProZ netiquette.

Such system would incentivate active participation to the site and limit abuse from anonymous askers with a blank profile. Anonymous askers are so busy posting long lists of questions that they have no time left to follow-up closing them, let alone saying a word of thank you.

I have also the very strong suspicion that some members have a double personality, with an official profile for bidding and PR, and a blank profile, containing only a nickname, for posting strings of questions and get their job done for free.

To control these cases of abuse, I suggest to scan all members, for each language pair by the community moderators and/or some helpers, and to issue a standard invitation to complete the profiles with real identification details.

This first step may be followed by a warning and then all blank profiles could be blocked.

No participation to job bidding, no questions posted, up to blocking their access to the site or deleting unused/blank entries.

In less than a few weeks the site could be clear from anonymous members, which are passive or just exploiting their colleagues\' good will.

After such \"weeding\" is carried out, the site may have fewer members but it will have much higher value.

[ This Message was edited by: on 2001-08-17 09:03 ] ▲ Collapse

Premium✍️

Francesco D'Alessandro
Spain
Local time: 23:09
English to Italian
+ ...

Aug 18, 2001

On 2001-06-08 11:26, ludovici wrote:

I think this feature would prevent people from posting too many questions at the same time, as an added bonus. We just had a couple of examples in the EN>IT and GERMAN>IT community where an asker was able to post 50 questions in less than an hour and 17 questions in a few minutes.

This feature would help us \"close\" open questions without having to send reminders (I send on average 10 reminders a week) and would prevent the posting of too many questions at a time.

Paola Ludovici MacQuarrie

EN>IT

Very simple, very effective both ways. I don\'t think anything else would be needed: this device would not restrict access to the question feature but would slow down the flow of questions, and would definitely solve the problem of lazy askers. You want to post 10 more questions? Then close your previous 10 first. It\'a middle-path solution and I\'m absolutely in favour. Francesco D\'Alessandro ▲ Collapse

Premium✍️

Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL

United Kingdom
Local time: 23:09
Member (2004)
English to Italian

Aug 18, 2001

I agree with Paola\'s proposal. If 5-10 questions (but I think it should be a maximum of 5) are not closed, the asker should not be allowed to post any more questions. I would add the possibility of closing the question without choosing an answer, if the asker deems them unsuitable, though.

Giovanni Guarnieri

Premium✍️

Roberto Robles
English to Spanish
+ ...

Aug 18, 2001

Hi. I have been in Proz.com less than a week. I have already answered 10+ questions; I don\'t recall exactly, and have asked none. Of those answes a few have been accepted and on some I got some \"agrees\" even if my answer wasn\'t selected...

So the point is this, I am serious about using this service, I am serious about my work and enjoy helping you all, knowing I will sooner than later need you all.

Please don\'t talk about limiting access to members who do not meet certain criteria which would basically have to do with having known and used this service longer than some of us. That doesn\'t seem fair if you look at it from my point of view.

But then what to do?

What I have seen these few days is that every now and then, someone will post a series of questions that clearly suggest \"do this for me, for free, please\".

So, as you know web sites allow to track all sorts of information indefinitely, why not require everybody to register in order to use this help tool, if abused once, a warning can be sent. If abused twice, Hasta la vista... You ban the IP address, and the user.

Of course, some people will simply re-register, and if they are connecting from a different machine, they\'ll have a different IP address... but it might help filter a few and discourage others...

In my experience working on web sites, once you ban someone, they hardly every come back.

Please comment as this being the first time I come here, I\'m feeling a little stagefright.

Best everyone!
[addsig] ▲ Collapse

gianfranco

Brazil
Local time: 19:09
Member (2001)
English to Italian
+ ...

Aug 20, 2001

Yes, there are some people abusing the \"Terms Help\", asking for their work to be done for free, and this is not entirely the spirit of this site.

We are here to share knowledge and help each other, not to do anybody\'s work for free.

It is such a thin line that many members are unable to see the difference.

The very same people are also unable to close the questions and to thank the helpers after they have grabbed the answers.

Regarding your suggestion, you may not be aware that many connections have a variable IP address, so blocking an IP address not only will not work but it may actually ban somebody else when they get by chance a banned IP.

This is not a technically viable solution.

Banning a \'name\' will not work either with the current \'easy\' option of re-registering.

As I have pointed out, currently anybody can register with a new name or no name at all, just a nickname and a blank profile are sufficient to start asking strings of questions.

I have suggested to implement a procedure for restricting new members\' rights to ask questions until when they have provided clear identification details, and to gradually \'weed out\' the existing many \'empty profiles\'.

I don\'t see how providing your real name and identification details can be unfair in any way?

A newcomer will have to put up with asking a limited number of questions per day (the suggested limit is 3-5 per day per person).

After providing help to colleagues (answering questions and earning some KudoZ) it seems fair that a member deserves the upgrade to a new limit, let\'s say up to 10 questions per day, and to upgrade again, up to unlimited questions when they have a proven record of providing help to fellows translators.

[ This Message was edited by: on 2001-08-20 16:15 ] ▲ Collapse

Aleksander Vasiljevic

Serbia
Local time: 00:09
Member (2003)
English to Serbian
+ ...

Want to ask more questions? Pay with $ or BrowniZ

Nov 19, 2001

As BrowniZ became a method of payment recently, I propose that all of those who want to ask more than, say, 10 questions in one day, would have to pay a certain amount of $ or 100x more in BrowniZ (perhaps $1 per question, just as it will be for bidding).

If some pro is really in a great need for assistance, this would be the easiest way for him to receive help. He will be satisfied, the answerers will be satisfied, the ProZ\'s owner will be satisfied. Everybody happy ... See more

BUT: What if a pro doesn\'t have neither a quick way to pay in $ nor enough BrowniZ?

My 2 BrowniZ... ▲ Collapse

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