| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4] | Answer with clear mistake selected in Kudoz, what now? Thread poster: delveneto
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RominaZ 
Argentina
English to Spanish
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| Helping askers | Jun 24, 2009 |
Hi all,
KudoZ is about term help, about helping the asker. The degree of seriousness each participant assigns to the activity of contributing to helping askers is, of course, up to them.
Thanks
Romina
| | | | | So offically speaking, taking Kudoz seriously is just a personal decision? | Jun 24, 2009 |
RominaZ wrote:
Hi all,
KudoZ is about term help, about helping the asker. The degree of seriousness each participant assigns to the activity of contributing to helping askers is, of course, up to them.
Thanks
Romina
In other words, those Proz colleagues who take (took) Kudoz seriously are/were doing so at their own risk and peril. Officially it makes no difference at all if the answer is right or wrong? Is this telling us to forget about being concerned about Kudoz and just let nature take its course? If that's the case, it really is time to get rid of Kudoz pointZ because they no longer mean a thing.
Too bad the powers that be didn't send out this 'who cares' message a few years ago. Pity too for the many hours spent by volunteers (Mods) trying to get the glossary straightened out.
Off-topic (but only slightly), where does this leave the 'reliability ratio'?? Reliable according to whom? It truly makes no sense at all now.
| | | | | Helping askers, part 2 | Jun 24, 2009 |
Hello writeaway,
I think you may be misinterpreting Romina's post. For some, responding in KudoZ may be a "game". For others, no. I don't see mention of "right" or "wrong" answers in her post, and if we are thinking of KudoZ as term help for the asker, maybe we should consider answers in degrees of helpfulness to the asker.
To clarify, by taking KudoZ as a "game" I understand "having fun with it as you do it". I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
... See more Hello writeaway,
I think you may be misinterpreting Romina's post. For some, responding in KudoZ may be a "game". For others, no. I don't see mention of "right" or "wrong" answers in her post, and if we are thinking of KudoZ as term help for the asker, maybe we should consider answers in degrees of helpfulness to the asker.
To clarify, by taking KudoZ as a "game" I understand "having fun with it as you do it". I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
Best regards,
Jared ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Answer with clear mistake selected in Kudoz, what now? | Jun 24, 2009 |
Jared wrote:
Hello writeaway,
I think you may be misinterpreting Romina's post. For some, responding in KudoZ may be a "game". For others, no. I don't see mention of "right" or "wrong" answers in her post, and if we are thinking of KudoZ as term help for the asker, maybe we should consider answers in degrees of helpfulness to the asker.
To clarify, by taking KudoZ as a "game" I understand "having fun with it as you do it". I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
Best regards,
Jared
Hi Jared,
I read Romina's statements with the title of this thread in mind.
Personally I don't see how anyone can measure the degree(s)of helpfulness to someone else. When we see the same person return with yet another job and a series of Kudoz questions, then we can assume answers were extremely helpful. Kudoz used to be lots of fun with exchanges and debates amongst colleagues. Today it's a contest/game and a venue for grandstanding for a number of Answerers and for a number of Askers, it's a vital tool for getting through jobs they wouldn't be able to handle otherwise. But there isn't much fun or camaraderie anymore.
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Siegfried Armbruster wrote:
The "devaluation" of the old Kudoz system and the resistance of Proz to any ideas and proposals to clean the KOG or to improve the quality of the Kudoz system is the reason why I more or less stopped answering questions, and I guess the day is not far where I completely stop using the system.
The bottom line is that askers frequently make bad, horrendously wrong decisions when closing their questions. The bottom line is pro-level KudoZ is attracting more and more clueless users who are not qualified to be translating professionally. The bottom line is the glossary is becoming more and more polluted in many language pairs.
The bottom line is there must be a way to clean up the mess. Disagreeing with bad answers doesn't make the glossaries as useful as they could be. Before the mass resignation of linguist moderators, we had some excellent "tools" to help direct this effort.
| | | | | Training/appraisal for new moderators (?); job descriptions (?) | Jun 24, 2009 |
Kim Metzger wrote:
The bottom line is there must be a way to clean up the mess. Disagreeing with bad answers doesn't make the glossaries as useful as they could be. Before the mass resignation of linguist moderators, we had some excellent "tools" to help direct this effort.
Kim, pardon me. 'mass resignation of linguist moderators' sounds like a generalisation (to me). How many moderators actually resigned. And which regions. Perhaps it is just the European languages which are affected.
Where there are new moderators perhaps they could undergo some initial training, peer appraisal or something ...
@ Kim
By 'tools', are you referring to the change in job descriptions for Moderators? or something else ...
[Edited at 2009-06-25 03:41 GMT]
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Kim Metzger wrote:
The bottom line is there must be a way to clean up the mess. Disagreeing with bad answers doesn't make the glossaries as useful as they could be. Before the mass resignation of linguist moderators, we had some excellent "tools" to help direct this effort.
I agree with you. There was a time when moderators were people devoted to help for the sake of terminology, they now (some of them at least) non longer have this ability. All the efforts are more turned to make this site a commercial and a "politically correct" site than a linguistic site.
Good evening.
| | | | Maria Karra
United States
Local time: 18:44
Member (2000)
Greek to English
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| answer to lai an | Jun 24, 2009 |
lai an wrote:
Kim, pardon me. 'mass resignation of linguist moderators' sounds like a generalisation (to me). How many moderators actually resigned.
About 35.
Maria
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delveneto
United States
Local time: 18:44
English to Portuguese
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TOPIC STARTER | It is a game | Jun 25, 2009 |
I started answering kudoz questions recently and soon I started getting bothered by what I was seeing going on, so many unfair decisions. So, I had two choices: stop answering or see it as a game. I have chosen the latter. Let's see:
1 - It is a game because you depend on luck to "win". You depend on how savvy the asker is regarding his or her knowledge about the language. Poor choices are made by those that don't know the language enough or don't care to know enough. They onl... See more I started answering kudoz questions recently and soon I started getting bothered by what I was seeing going on, so many unfair decisions. So, I had two choices: stop answering or see it as a game. I have chosen the latter. Let's see:
1 - It is a game because you depend on luck to "win". You depend on how savvy the asker is regarding his or her knowledge about the language. Poor choices are made by those that don't know the language enough or don't care to know enough. They only care about getting a "reasonable" answer to their urgent needs. You may spend 20-30 minutes researching for a term, you find a good answer, but some askers take it for granted, they don't actually know how far you went to try and help him or her. So, luck plays its big part here. One way to avoid bad choices by the asker is not to answer to those that have hundreds of questions and a few answers in his or her history.
2 - It is a game because you may spend those 20-30 minutes researching to find your answer, that is correct, but some other "player" comes, reads the result of your painful research, learns about the term and guess something else that ends up being chosen by the unsavvy asker.
3 - It is a game because there is a judge, an ultimate powerful last-word judge that is the asker. He or she makes his or her own rules about how to decide which answer to choose, you are at the mercy of his or her _unknown_ rules.
4 - It is a game because it is for points. Remove the points and we have no more game.
So, I do see it as a game now where I have my share of fun, because I really like working with languages, "decifering" puzzling expressions, and I also like helping others. If I "win or lose", it's a side effect. Anyway, through my answers I am (in some sense) proving that I have the necessary knowledge to do my job well. That's a "win", always.
Some askers' poor decisions still make me perplexed and they always will, but, hey, what I think now is, I've done my part and if he or she is not able to do his or her part well, it is not my fault. ▲ Collapse
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