| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4 5 6] | Askers should wait 24 hours before grading or transfer the grading rights to the community Thread poster: Enrique Cavalitto
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Enrique Cavalitto 
Argentina
Local time: 16:44
Member (2006)
English to Spanish
TOPIC STARTER | My perceptions on this issue | Jul 3, 2009 |
The premature grading of questions was considered a serious issue by many members. Statistics show that 23% of questions were closed before the recommended 24 hours period.
The implementation announced in this thread has prevented the grading of questions during the first 24 hours, and the figures above suggest me that most askers are getting used to wait 24 hours before grading their questions.
The fact that in about 13% of questions the askers still try to close them... See more The premature grading of questions was considered a serious issue by many members. Statistics show that 23% of questions were closed before the recommended 24 hours period.
The implementation announced in this thread has prevented the grading of questions during the first 24 hours, and the figures above suggest me that most askers are getting used to wait 24 hours before grading their questions.
The fact that in about 13% of questions the askers still try to close them during the first 24 hours shows that there is still room for improvement. Better messages could improve this situation.
The fact that only 3.9% of questions are left to the community is in line with the discussion in other threads where most users considered that they would not select this option. This is a reasonable value.
There are a few questions left open that would otherwise have been closed. There is also room for improvement here.
Regards,
Enrique ▲ Collapse
| | | | boostrer
United States
Local time: 15:44
Member (2007)
English to Russian
+ ...
I am with Jack Doughty. This is just an unnecessary complication. I wonder, who has proposed this idea - it seems to me that this person was neither asker, nor answerer.
| | | | Oliver Walter
United Kingdom
Local time: 20:44
German to English
+ ...
| Potentially the most important suggestion | Jul 8, 2009 |
In this very long thread, which I did not see before today (because I've recently not visited Proz much) I think potentially the most important suggestion was made by Christine Andersen on 9 June but has been ignored (I have added the bold for emphasis):
What I would like to see is a rule that forces askers who close without grading to enter the answer they "found elsewhere" if there is one.
It is enormously irritating to spend time looking for a term and be met with: "ha ha, it's my secret!"
I feel it is quite against the principle of sharing in KudoZ. It is just plain rude to ask for help and then not share the results.
And another wish, that I have also had for a long time, came from Tadzio Carvallo on 3 June:
I would better like to be allowed to share out the points between two (or more) colleague translators, due to sometimes it feels you're being unfair for leaving out another good answer.
Oliver
| | | | | A time-out for persistent abusers | Jul 9, 2009 |
Christine Andersen wrote:
What I would like to see is a rule that forces askers who close without grading to enter the answer they "found elsewhere" if there is one.
It is enormously irritating to spend time looking for a term and be met with: "ha ha, it's my secret!"
I feel it is quite against the principle of sharing in KudoZ. It is just plain rude to ask for help and then not share the results.
It should not IMHO be possible to close a question within 24 hours without accepting an answer or adding the one "found elsewhere" as a proposal for the glossary.
Many of those who answer KudoZ do it as a kind of exercise and investment, because the same questions may turn up again, and it is great to find the answer in the glossary without having to wait for new answers.
The KudoZ system is a partnership between the asker and the potential helpers. Most askers are pros who understand this and go out of their way to respect the fact that they are asking busy translators to spend some time on their questions. They in turn spend time formulating their questions carefully and often go to great lengths to explain why they’ve chosen one answer over the others.
Unfortunately, we occasionally also have askers who bite the hand that feeds them. They react to requests for context with hostility. They close questions without grading indicating they have found the answer elsewhere without saying what this answer is. They seem to think KudoZ is some kind of translation machine: you enter your question and out pops an answer, instead of a partnership between fellow human beings.
We have learned to live with uninformed askers who appear now and then and then disappear again, but when we are abused over and over again for two years, despite repeated requests from members to conform to some minimal standards for asking questions, we have to say enough is enough and do something about it.
Unfortunately all the rules are stacked in favor of askers. They are the untouchables.
Any hint askers that they ought to reconsider their performance is prohibited.
It’s my impression that the site decision-makers are not experienced KudoZ users and I believe the site should hire a professional translator who has had extensive experience using KudoZ and who could advise them on policy and talk to members about our concerns. One very good step in the right direction would be to give persistent abusers a time-out until they have conformed to some minimal standards for asking questions.
[Edited at 2009-07-09 12:49 GMT]
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Attila Piróth
France
Local time: 21:44
Member
English to Hungarian
+ ...
| More detailed data, please | Jul 13, 2009 |
Enrique wrote:
The premature grading of questions was considered a serious issue by many members. Statistics show that 23% of questions were closed before the recommended 24 hours period.
The implementation announced in this thread has prevented the grading of questions during the first 24 hours, and the figures above suggest me that most askers are getting used to wait 24 hours before grading their questions.
The fact that in about 13% of questions the askers still try to close them during the first 24 hours shows that there is still room for improvement. Better messages could improve this situation.
The fact that only 3.9% of questions are left to the community is in line with the discussion in other threads where most users considered that they would not select this option. This is a reasonable value.
There are a few questions left open that would otherwise have been closed. There is also room for improvement here.
Regards,
Enrique
Hi Enrique,
Thank you for sharing the usage patterns. Breaking down these aggregate data would be quite useful. Several contributors noted that trying to close the questions prematurely occurs more often among new users and less experienced KudoZ users. So, would it be possible to break down these data further, to see newbies' usage patterns? Something like this (blue indicates missing figures), including numbers not only percentages:
******************************************************************
Before implementation:
Closing before 24 hour limit
All users: 23.9%; X questions out of a total of Y
Experienced users: Z%; X questions out of a total of Y
Inexperienced users: Z%; X questions out of a total of Y
After implementation:
Attempt to close before 24 hour limit
All users: 13%; X questions out of a total of Y
Experienced users: Z%; X questions out of a total of Y
Inexperienced users: Z%; X questions out of a total of Y
Transferring grading rights to the community
All users: 3.9%; X questions out of a total of Y
Experienced users: Z%; X questions out of a total of Y
Inexperienced users: Z%; X questions out of a total of Y
******************************************************************
Now the separation between "Experienced users" and "Inexperienced users" is not straightforward, so several definitions should be tried.
Some possibilities:
A user is considered experienced if he/she has at least X KudoZ points OR has asked Y KudoZ questions OR is a KudoZ editor OR a certified PRO etc.
While such a definition may be simplistic, it can possibly be enough to make a clear separation in the usage patterns between experienced users and inexperienced ones. If, for example, transferring the grading rights to the community is only 2.5% among experienced users and 5% among inexperienced ones, the difference is significant; this should be taken into account when new users are informed about the best practices in KudoZ.
Just a personal remark: 3.9% is much higher than what I would have expected. It would be interesting to know if there are some language pairs where this practice is more widely used – but I realize that producing such a breakdown may be quite time consuming, and have a much smaller significance than the separation between experienced/inexperienced users.
Attila
| | | | Enrique Cavalitto
Argentina
Local time: 16:44
Member (2006)
English to Spanish
TOPIC STARTER | Cost-effectiveness | Jul 13, 2009 |
Dear Attila,
The statistics you suggest would be time consuming to implement, and the advantages of having this information (even though the data would be interesting) would weigh less than the cost of getting it.
Regards,
Enrique
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