Report Typo Reward

Looking at the MacArthur sermon archive, I had an idea. Since Logos is a premium service offering a premium product, typos and mistagged resources are annoying, although inevitable. It would be nice if Logos offered a 10 or 15 cent credit for each verified typo we report; not a lot of money, but something to show that reports are appreciated and to encourage more reports, leading to better resources. Someone who frequently posts false alarms might be kept from reporting.

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Comments

Rosie Perera

Good suggestion. What would you do with duplicates (multiple people reporting the same typo)? Perhaps only the first person who reports it gets the reward? Or diminishing rewards for multiple reports of the same typo? Just to keep Faithlife from going broke if 1000 people (a fraction of all the users, but still a significant number) report the same 1000 typos (there could easily be that many) in the same most popular resources over and over...

Judging by how far behind Faithlife is in fixing the typos we've already reported, though, I don't think they feel there's any further need to incentivize typo reporting. We're already doing it faster than they can keep up with us! [:)]

Justin Gatlin

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/680843#Comment_680843

I think you could do a diminished reward for repeats, up until the correction is ready to download.

Judging by how far behind Faithlife is in fixing the typos we've already reported, though, I don't think they feel there's any further need to incentivize typo reporting. We're already doing it faster than they can keep up with us!

If the process included an incentive, it might be able to be automated, which would kill two birds at once. If 10 people all report the same typo with the same "Should be" field, Faithlife should be able to accept the change automatically then, and spend man-power investigating the rarer reports (maybe less popular resources, or less obvious errors). If an automatic correction took place after 10 votes, and the first person received a 15 cent credit and the others a 5 cent credit, that is 60 cents to correct the mistake. Since FL gave us all 20 dollars for Christmas, such a credit seems reasonable, even when scaled out.

SineNomine

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/680849#Comment_680849

If 10 people all report the same typo with the same "Should be" field, Faithlife should be able to accept the change automatically then, and spend man-power investigating the rarer reports (maybe less popular resources, or less obvious errors).

As a Canadian who is very much aware of the two realities of British spelling in many Faithlife books and many Americans thinking that British spelling is a system of typos, I am emphatically against such a thing.

I also do not think that typo-finding should be or needs to be incentivized at all. All I want is for Faithlife is to correct more of them, but I understand that their resources are quite limited and that typo-correcting, for a library that size and with (as has been written elsewhere by them) so many false reports, is expensive.

Justin Gatlin

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/680868#Comment_680868

If 10 people all report the same typo with the same "Should be" field, Faithlife should be able to accept the change automatically then, and spend man-power investigating the rarer reports (maybe less popular resources, or less obvious errors).

As a Canadian who is very much aware of the two realities of British spelling in many Faithlife books and many Americans thinking that British spelling is a system of typos, I am emphatically against such a thing.

That's a fair point. But common spelling differences are a relatively small list of words, which could be automatically excluded very easily with an ordinary database query. I don't think incentivizing is important on its own, but it is frustrating to notice a typo on an app, go to the computer to report it (since that can't be done on mobile) and then see that nothing is done for a long stretch of time (or at all, after a while I give up on checking). Incentives give more good data, which makes automation more feasible, while still giving a small reward for remaining diligent. It might even be a filter, like community highlights; you could click a check box: implement community typo reports.

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/680885#Comment_680885

Incentives give more good data, which makes automation more feasible

People have suggested automation before, after a certain number of corroborating reports of the same typo. For whatever reason, Faithlife has decided not to do that. I believe they explained why once on the forums, but I doubt I could put my fingers on it just now. I think they simply felt it was too tricky a thing to be automated. Some typos are indeed simple text replacements, but many of them involve internal coding/tagging in the resource. For example if I report a typo in a heading, but that heading includes a link to Scripture reference, if the substitution were done automatically, it could wreck the tagging. Or if it was something that everyone thought was a typo but it was actually spelled that way in the original source and Logos doesn't as a rule fix typos in original sources, then it could get dicey. I guess the bottom line was they just don't feel it's feasible enough to save them the human cost of manual typo fixes. I just wish they had a team of humans (even just 2 would be fine with me) who were working full time on fixing typos. I don't think they do or we'd be seeing more of the typos we report being fixed in a more timely fashion.

Robert M. Warren

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/680843#Comment_680843

Judging by how far behind Faithlife is in fixing the typos

And pictos, too. Nelson's New Christian Dictionary still thinks the 5th century heretic Pelagius looks just like Pope Pelagius I: .logosres:nncd;hw=Pelagius

I think that was the first thing I reported about 5 years ago.

Randy W. Sims

Knuth Check!

toughski

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/680868#Comment_680868

As a Canadian who is very much aware of the two realities of British spelling in many Faithlife books and many Americans thinking that British spelling is a system of typos, I am emphatically against such a thing.

you misunderstand what "report typo" does: it is reporting a discrepancy between Logos' resource and printed (or otherwise published) text, not a variance in British/American spelling. Most of time, publishers proof-read their texts very well. Scanning, OCR and Logos tagging introduce a lot of errors though.

SineNomine

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/680958#Comment_680958

As a Canadian who is very much aware of the two realities of British spelling in many Faithlife books and many Americans thinking that British spelling is a system of typos, I am emphatically against such a thing.

you misunderstand what "report typo" does: it is reporting a discrepancy between Logos' resource and printed (or otherwise published) text, not a variance in British/American spelling. Most of time, publishers proof-read their texts very well. Scanning, OCR and Logos tagging introduce a lot of errors though.

I do not misunderstand what Report Typo does. I know exactly what Report Typo is supposed to do, and I know exactly what people in fact use it for. People use it to send in corrections of things that they think are wrong. Sometimes it is they themselves who are wrong. Americans frequently think that British spellings are wrong. Many people also think that certain archaic spellings and schemas for punctuation are wrong. I suspect that the Oxford or serial comma frequently gets 'corrected' in both directions. Et cetera.

toughski

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/680977#Comment_680977

Sometimes it is they themselves who are wrong.

yes, it is true

Americans frequently think that British spellings are wrong.

they are, if the author is American.

when proofreading I consider the author. If he/she is British, then British spelling should be considered as correct. If he/she is American - then American.

As I stated before, Logos' texts should be compared to their printed counterparts, not what an individual may think is correct. Let's preserve Authorial Intent.

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/680985#Comment_680985

As I stated before, Logos' texts should be compared to their printed counterparts, not what an individual may think is correct. Let's preserve Authorial Intent.

The point is, people use the Report Typo tool whenever they are reading a digital book and come across what they consider to be a typo. I'd wager that 99% of the time they do not check the printed edition first before reporting the typo, and probably 75% of the time they don't even own the printed resource to check against. It is Logos's responsibility (and they do this) to see whether the reported typo was in the original print edition or if it was introduced in the digital edition. They will only fix it if it's their fault. If it's the original publisher's fault, they will notify the publisher. The Report Typo tool is useful for this reason too, even if Logos faithfully transcribed the error from the original.

Matthew C Jones

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/680985#Comment_680985

As I stated before, Logos' texts should be compared to their printed counterparts, not what an individual may think is correct. Let's preserve Authorial Intent.

The other thread about John MacArthur's sermons and all the typos therein shows how vulnerable Faithlife/Logos can be on this issue.

toughski

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/680988#Comment_680988

As a Canadian who is very much aware of the two realities of British spelling in many Faithlife books and many Americans thinking that British spelling is a system of typos, I am emphatically against such a thing.

As I stated before, Logos' texts should be compared to their printed counterparts, not what an individual may think is correct. Let's preserve Authorial Intent.

The other thread about John MacArthur's sermons and all the typos therein shows how vulnerable Faithlife/Logos can be on this issue.

sorry, this was taken a little out of context. My reply was to SineNomine about British/American spelling. The OP wrote about numerous typos from a community-transcribed MacArthur sermons. Since he is an American, my comment about using American spelling for his sermons stands. However, it is my belief that Faithlife should have spent significant time and resources correcting typos in this elsewhere-FREE text, especially, since they are charging such a premium for this.