| Σελίδες για το θέμα: < [1 2] | What to do about Kudoz 'tourists'? Αποστολέας σε συζήτηση: lexical
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| How you can help consistent application of the rules | Aug 17, 2008 |
writeaway wrote:
Katalin Horvath McClure wrote:
4. See KudoZ Rule # 3.1: Systematic guessing is not allowed. That means that people who are clearly just taking stabs at questions outside of their language pairs and expertise, in a fashion that cannot be seen as "occasional", are in violation of the rules. If you see this happening, please call it to the attention of the Moderator.
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But "occasional guessing is allowed". Unfortunately as with so many of the rules, interpretation is wide open and will depend entirely on who is 'interpreting' the difference between 'occasional' and 'systematic' and who they are interpreting in favour of/against. Consistency in application and/or non-applicaiton of all rules would be a tremendous improvement.
Have you ever reported any systematic guessing activity to the Moderators or site staff? If not, please start doing so.
You need to help us to be able to help you.
Since these people are "contributing" in many language pairs, little bit at a time in each, their activity may not raise a red flag with the Moderator of the individual language pair. But if you guys start pointing this out, across language pairs, that should lead to somewhere as the Mods are talking with each other. Complaints about such activity from multiple language pairs will result in ModZ and staff looking into the situation and take the appropriate steps.
some askers and peers start to assimilate 'familiarity' with 'reliability' and actually give peer agrees to totally nonsensical answers. It seems that you can gain credibility just by putting in regular appearances on Kudoz questions.
If their peers use the Disagree button, I don't think this could happen. I observed quite the opposite, after a while of posting rubbish as answers and getting a good load of disagrees as a result, the credibility of the person diminished, and frankly, people don't take him/her seriously anymore, even if he/she posts useful staff occasionally.
Naturally these tourists amass lots of those coveted Kudoz points.
I doubt this could be sustainable - again, IF peers are using the peer comment functions correctly.
Rule 3.7: you cannot question their right to answer.
That is correct.
However, if they break the rules, they WILL lose their right to answer.
Multiple disagrees, supported by linguistic reasoning, will put the "answer" into the "guess" category. Moderators are not linguistic authorities, the community is much more like that, so please help us see what you consider rubbish. I trust that we are all professionals and can handle these in a civilized manner. I am not - by any means - encouraging personal vendettas.
That basically cancels out any effectiveness of rule 3.1.
No, it doesn't.
So all we can do it rant about this problem because there is indeed very little anyone can do.
I will not repeat what I listed in my previous posting about what you and anybody CAN DO. You can rant about the problem in general as much as you want, but that will not solve anything. Site staff and moderators are already aware that this phenomenon seems to be causing problems in certain language pairs.
Actually, I've never seen anyone invoking rule 3.1 in those cases.
I have, last time very recently (in the past few weeks). It was a result of staff and Mods getting reports from various KudoZ-pairs regarding a specific user (actually it was two users) that engaged in systematic guessing. After discussing it and seeing the evidence across language pairs, the users received their appropriate admin actions.
So, please help us with your disagrees, or if that does not help, by reporting the specifics either through an email to the Mod, or via a Support Request.
We can and will take it from there.
| | | | Richard Jenkins 
Βραζιλία
Local time: 12:50
Μέλος από 2006
Πορτογαλικά σε Αγγλικά
+ ...
| Why disturbing? | Aug 18, 2008 |
Jana Zajicova wrote:
I plead guilty. I've got points in English-Slovak, Slovak-English, Polish-German, German-Italian. Well, I wasn't exactly guessing but the fun element was definitely there in some cases.
I wonder why it should disturb anyone, though. As long as answerers do not misrepresent their competence by systematically choosing inappropriately high confidence levels, everything is fine in my opinion. Instead of introducing restrictions on language pairs, I would not permit closing of questions within, say, 24 hours after posting them. And askers would not be allowed to stop tracking their questions during the same period. This way, they would make informed decisions when adding a glossary entry, taking in account the opinions of the community, not just the first guess that happened to appear.
[Edited at 2008-08-16 21:34]
The reason that this practice is 'disturbing' to some of us is because we consider ourselves to be professional translators in our pairs (mine is Portuguese to English, principally), but are constantly subject to witnessing some very poor translations, websites, etc... where it is very evident that non-native translators are being employed to do the translation work. For me, personally, it is offensive to read an English document that's written with a heavy, unrefined, quick-dollar hand. It's tiring and it's boring and it's frustrating and it's....after all, surely killing the standard of the industry and our status as professionals.
| | | | Richard Jenkins
Βραζιλία
Local time: 12:50
Μέλος από 2006
Πορτογαλικά σε Αγγλικά
+ ...
| Peer agrees / disagrees count for very little | Aug 18, 2008 |
Yaotl Altan wrote:
Right, the disagree button is helpful to show our position on the matter. How? Pressing it. When a user collects many disagrees, he/she will be linked to useless answers.
[Edited at 2008-08-16 23:56]
Hi Yaotl.
One of the sincere difficulties with this system is that from to time an answerer can receive -3 or -4 (or even more peer disagrees) and yet STILL get awarded Kudoz points. It is entirely wrong and inappropriate when a non-logged in user can ask a question taken from homework or non-professional translation work and then subsequently award points for an answer that has intellectually been condemned by other professionals. How is this possible?
Do my/our peer agrees/disagrees count for absolutely nothing ? YES! Evidently so. Many, many, many times.
Does a non-logged in user, with no professional experience, have the right to award an equal amount of Kudoz status points as that of a person with ten years experience. NO! But they can and do, frequently!!
Yes, we can hack and chop and condemn all we like, but we have no final say in who and how points are awarded. It's often simply a 'snap' decision that isn't based on the opinions of others but simply on the original asker's idea of what they think is best at the time.
I feel that answers that have +3 or more peer agrees should automatically be awarded with a Kudoz point or equivalent...(bouncing ideas here) and that it should not be possible to award points to answers with -3 or more peer disagrees.
I'd welcome more discussion here, happily.
Best Regards.
[Edited at 2008-08-18 16:43]
[Edited at 2008-08-18 19:45]
| | | | | I was unaware of rule 3.1. | Aug 18, 2008 |
I was unaware of rule 3.1 and unaware there was any rule with teeth that was used to stop people from answering with wild or irresponsible guesses.
Unfortunately I don't see much hope for stopping people who systematically guess. I can think of at least one person who has been cruising around the site for years with wild guesses in over 30 different language pairs and afaik this person has never been curbed at all.
The 'wild guessing' with no refs or bogus refs (usually just a who... See more I was unaware of rule 3.1 and unaware there was any rule with teeth that was used to stop people from answering with wild or irresponsible guesses.
Unfortunately I don't see much hope for stopping people who systematically guess. I can think of at least one person who has been cruising around the site for years with wild guesses in over 30 different language pairs and afaik this person has never been curbed at all.
The 'wild guessing' with no refs or bogus refs (usually just a whole page of Google hits, related or not to the question), is also endemic in some residential (ie non-touring) guessers too. They answer in every single field that comes up and their pals on the respective sites 'agree' with them because disagreeing and/or giving neutrals is often considered 'unfriendly'. Kudoz is evolving and quality or accuracy of answers doesn't matter like it once did. I'd even suggest there is a bit of tit for tat grading-you always agree with me, so I'll be kind and return the favour-you always criticize me and now it's my turn........ Sometimes people give agrees and their comments actually criticize the answer they are agreeing with. It's just my observation but the current attitude seems to be 'don't rain on my parade'...........
How will the Mods and staff decide who is 'guessing'? Determining whether a person is systematically guessing requires the evaluators to be linguistic authorities, but moderators are no longer allowed to act or be considered as linguistic authorities.
I have the feeling that it will depend on who is doing the reporting, who is being reported and who is responsible for any decision.
Sorry Katalin, but I just don't see how things are going to change. Rule 3.7 is there to keep a tight lid even on tactful criticism (everything can be interpreted as a 'personal' remark if someone wants to) and that certainly takes precedence over any complaints about lack of professionalism and/or quality of answers. ▲ Collapse
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Jeff Whittaker
Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες Αμερικής
Local time: 10:50
Ισπανικά σε Αγγλικά
+ ...
| KudoZ tourists | Aug 18, 2008 |
There are many people (myself included) who know/study languages that are not among their working pairs. Many years ago, we had what were called "languages of interest". I have been studying some languages for over 15 years, but I do not translate from them. While I now restrict my KudoZ answers to my working language pairs (especially since points outside your pairs no longer count for ranking purposes), I currently have KudoZ points for a number of pairs (Catalan to English, Italian to Spanish... See more There are many people (myself included) who know/study languages that are not among their working pairs. Many years ago, we had what were called "languages of interest". I have been studying some languages for over 15 years, but I do not translate from them. While I now restrict my KudoZ answers to my working language pairs (especially since points outside your pairs no longer count for ranking purposes), I currently have KudoZ points for a number of pairs (Catalan to English, Italian to Spanish, Arabic to English, German to Portuguese, Esperanto to Italian, Chinese to French, Latin to Italian, etc.). Back then, there were not that many people answering questions, so any help was welcome.
While I certainly agree that people should not guess or give irresponsible answers, it is possible to have extensive and helpful knowledge of a foreign language (for the purposes of terminology assistance) without this necessarily being one of your working pairs.
[Edited at 2008-08-18 20:08] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Michele Fauble
Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες Αμερικής
Local time: 08:50
Νορβηγικά σε Αγγλικά
+ ...
| Beyond tourism | Aug 18, 2008 |
Jeff Whittaker wrote:
There are many people (myself included) who know/study languages that are not among their working pairs.
While I certainly agree that people should not guess or give irresponsible answers, it is possible to have extensive and helpful knowledge of a foreign language (for the purposes of terminology assistance) without this necessarily being one of your working pairs.
I also suggest answers to questions in language pairs I don't work in. Even though these are not languages I currently choose to work in, they are languages that I know very well.
| | | | | That doesn't always work out | Aug 18, 2008 |
Yaotl Altan wrote:
Right, the disagree button is helpful to show our position on the matter. How? Pressing it. When a user collects many disagrees, he/she will be linked to useless answers.
Yes, but what happens if you disagree with someone who is incidentally from the same country or region as the majority of answerers (while you are from a different country/region)? I'll tell you because I just lived through it myself.
You post a disagree. The person, upon seeing your disagree, posts a disagree to your answer, saying you have no credibility because you are not from the same geographical region or country as the majority of answerers (never mind that the asker never even specificed a country/region, and that therefore your answer used the internationally recognized term). The other answerers, since they are from the same country/region, keep approving the wrong answer of the person you disagreed with, and nobody posts an agree on yours.
KudoZ is being held hostage by people who toot their horn, point-grabbers and gangs who think they have every right to discredit others (discrimination) because they want to prove they are superior (whereas they are not).
I just announced my quitting KudoZ altogether precisely because answerers in KudoZ seem to serve all kinds of interests outside the scope of KudoZ without ever trying to serve the real purpose of KudoZ - helping the asker find the correct term. Look in the KudoZ section of the forum to find my thread (posted only minutes ago).
Something ought to be done about this. Sorry to say, but this just makes the community look like a bunch of idiots. And since I am not an idiot and therefore don't want to be seen as such, I will partake in this no more.
[Edited at 2008-08-18 20:17]
| | | | Andrea Riffo
Χιλή
Local time: 12:50
Αγγλικά σε Ισπανικά
+ ...
writeaway wrote:
I have the feeling that it will depend on who is doing the reporting, who is being reported and who is responsible for any decision.
Greetings
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Jana Zajicova
Δημοκρατία της Τσεχίας
Μέλος από 2007
Αγγλικά σε Τσεχικά
+ ...
| Non sequitur? | Aug 19, 2008 |
Richard Jenkins wrote:
The reason that this practice is 'disturbing' to some of us is because we consider ourselves to be professional translators in our pairs (mine is Portuguese to English, principally), but are constantly subject to witnessing some very poor translations, websites, etc... where it is very evident that non-native translators are being employed to do the translation work. For me, personally, it is offensive to read an English document that's written with a heavy, unrefined, quick-dollar hand. It's tiring and it's boring and it's frustrating and it's....after all, surely killing the standard of the industry and our status as professionals.
You lost me. How are non-native translators producing poor translations related to my providing of answers beyond my pairs? Does that mean that I encourage poor translations by offering help? If so, how exactly?
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