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25000 Books Proofread By Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders

Posted by Unknown on from the get-your-free-knowledge dept.

New submitter fritsd writes "Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders, a volunteer site which helps provide public domain books to Project Gutenberg, announced that their 100 000+ volunteers have reached the milestone of 25 000 books scanned, OCRed, and then meticulously proofread." The 25000th title is The Art and Practice of Silver Printing by Capt. Abney and H. P. Robinson.

29 comments

  1. meticulously proofread by slashmydots · · Score: 1

    If I'm not mistaken, they mean meticulously proofred by us in reCAPTCHAs. I think that was the organization that got into that a little.

    1. Re:meticulously proofread by buchner.johannes · · Score: 1

      No, this is more similar to GalaxyZoo approach, showing a page at a time and letting the proof-reader compare OCR and image side-by-side. See first link.

      The more interesting question is, will this serve as a test data set to improve OCRs?

      --
      NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
    2. Re:meticulously proofread by cruff · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If I'm not mistaken, they mean meticulously proofred by us in reCAPTCHAs.

      When I was proofreading on DP, all rounds of proofreading involved examining the scanned images and comparing it to the OCR text and making corrections. The later rounds of proofreading involved increasing attention to various details of correctness and formatting. All of this was done directly in the DP web interface. I didn't see any mention of the use of captchas in the OCR process.

    3. Re:meticulously proofread by wbr1 · · Score: 1

      Who cares. Captcha performas a needed service. I have seceral domains that would be over run by spambots if not for it. If it performs a secondary service, great.

      --
      Silence is a state of mime.
    4. Re:meticulously proofread by fatgraham · · Score: 1

      Oh surely that's a genius CAPTCHA system!
      "Correct this flagged-as-wrong OCR text". OCR-bots would surely get it wrong, and the humans would contribute to the greater good!

      Of course this assumes the humans can spell and will do correct corrections. MayB Nt th3n!!11!.

    5. Re:meticulously proofread by Halotron1 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yep, multiple rounds, and multiple levels of proofers and formatters
      who have to earn the right to access those higher rounds
      by completing hundreds of pages and passing a few tests.

    6. Re:meticulously proofread by butalearner · · Score: 5, Informative

      I signed up and proofread a few pages when I saw someone mention this site in the comments a few weeks ago. It's pretty interesting stuff and is mostly intuitive, but there are some tricky corner cases, e.g. hyphenated words that span two lines. Back in the day, publishers were pretty inconsistent about what words were hyphenated (e.g. to-day), and Project Gutenberg is (rightly) adamant that the text maintains the original spelling and hyphenation.

      The only thing I completely missed was that I didn't put an extra newline at the top of the page when the first line was the start of a new paragraph. Those instances were found and corrected by the second-round proofreader. There is a third round of proofing, two rounds of formatting, two rounds of post processing, and then an optional "Smooth Reading" round that anyone can do. I've checked out a few of the finished products, and they are much, much better than the naked OCR'd texts of old.

    7. Re:meticulously proofread by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, are you critizising the existing, widely used recaptcha system? See the recaptcha description.

    8. Re:meticulously proofread by mspohr · · Score: 3, Informative

      I have read quite a few of their books and have found them all to be high quality edits.
      I would like to thank everyone who has worked on the project for the excellent job they are doing.

      (In contrast, I recently purchased a Kindle copy of Paul Theroux's The Happy Isles of Oceania which is about 20 years old and they obviously produced the electronic copy by OCR and from the looks of it did little or no proofreading. There were obvious typos on every page. It's irritating that a publisher who actually get's paid to do this work can't be bothered to do even cursory proofreading.)

      Makes you appreciate the fine work the Gutenberg people are doing.

      --
      I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
  2. Thanks! by Tim+the+Gecko · · Score: 3, Informative

    Many thanks to Project Gutenberg and their volunteers. There is a lot of great public domain material out there, and I've especially enjoyed Dickens, Wilkie Collins and Trollope. Also Jules Verne's work is pretty good for French learners.

    1. Re:Thanks! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      Jules Verne's work is awsome. I'm reading it now and learning french. And for you who are also learning, there are some good free audio books out there, e.g. http://www.litteratureaudio.com/

    2. Re:Thanks! by Tim+the+Gecko · · Score: 1

      Jules Verne's work is awsome. I'm reading it now and learning french. And for you who are also learning, there are some good free audio books out there, e.g. http://www.litteratureaudio.com/

      Also librivox.org has some good French content. "Ezwa" has a great reading voice and does many of the chapters in this book - http://librivox.org/le-tour-du-monde-en-quatre-vingts-jours-by-jules-verne/

    3. Re:Thanks! by Livius · · Score: 2

      It's a fantastic contribution to human intellectual heritage. Once in digital form, it will be easy to make copies and ensure a high degree of redundancy so that this knowledge and culture will not be lost even if civilization suffers a setback.

  3. Slashdot proofreading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wisely, UnknownLamer kept his summary to a minimum to avoid the inevitable jokes about the poor quality of writing by Slashdot editors.

  4. whose paying these guys? by Thud457 · · Score: 1

    proof that socialism is a failure.

    --

    the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

    1. Re:whose paying these guys? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      proof that socialism is a failure.

      Volunteering || Charity != Socialism.

    2. Re:whose paying these guys? by chipschap · · Score: 3, Insightful

      proof that socialism is a failure.

      Proof that people can in fact be decent, generous, and caring.

    3. Re:whose paying these guys? by GLMDesigns · · Score: 1, Troll
      Socialism is top-down government officials commanding individuals to obey the collective. Many socialists desire that people belong to the state.

      Melissa Harris-Perry ... professor at Tulane, has endorsed the concept of human ownership by the state ... saying in a promo for MSNBC that "we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities." http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/040913-651296-msnbc-host-says-children-belong-to-k

      All activities that people, on their own, join and participate in is part of the free-market. Yes, that means food co-ops where everyone hates capitalism are part and parcel of the free-market.

      --
      If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
      Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
    4. Re:whose paying these guys? by Kjella · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Proof that people can in fact be decent, generous, and caring.

      Or bored. many years ago I had this temp job of staffing the front desk, really quite little traffic and the occasional call, collecting the mail and various other small duties but a lot of downtime and no interest in training me for more since it was a rather short contract. Project Gutenberg seemed like a good way to pass the time, and they were cool with it as long as I tended to my other duties when they needed tending. Seem like a better use of my time than playing solitaire.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    5. Re:whose paying these guys? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Proof that you are a moron: you don't know the difference between 'whose' and 'who is'.
      Or what socialism is.

    6. Re:whose paying these guys? by LeadSongDog · · Score: 2

      Proof that you are a moron: you don't know the difference between 'whose' and 'who is'...

      That's why he's pissed at PD. They didn't like his work product.

      --
      Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
    7. Re:whose paying these guys? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Volunteer work != socialism
      For this to be socialism, the government would have to force its citizens to contribute their time and energy to the project.
      As an example, this correction of your erroneous statement is not socialism, even though you didn't pay for it.

    8. Re:whose paying these guys? by GLMDesigns · · Score: 1

      To the person who moderated this post as "troll" Any particular reason why you so marked it that way? I directly answered the OPs post. Or, is it that your moderation is based on how you feel about the opinion stated?

      --
      If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
      Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
  5. I'm glad he's doing someting with his time, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'm glad Mr. Guttenberg is doing something with his time and money with such a noble project as this. I guess it makes up for the Police Academy movies he did.

    Now if I only read books.

    1. Re:I'm glad he's doing someting with his time, by GLMDesigns · · Score: 1

      not bad :-)

      --
      If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
      Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
  6. Hitting the Sonny Bono wall by tepples · · Score: 2

    There is a lot of great public domain material out there

    So what happens once Project Gutenberg has finished releasing all notable books in the English language that were first published on or before 1922?

    1. Re:Hitting the Sonny Bono wall by slash.dt · · Score: 2

      So what happens once Project Gutenberg has finished releasing all notable books in the English language that were first published on or before 1922?

      Since lots of things are in the public domain in other countries that are not in the PD in the US, maybe there could be a Project Gutenberg.uk ?

  7. Michael Hart by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

    Many thanks to Project Gutenberg and their volunteers.

    Also many thanks to Michael Hart, the founder, heart, and soul of Project Gutenberg. Michael passed away in 2011. Although I never met him face-to-face, we exchanged many emails, and even spoke on the phone a few times. He was a generous and selfless man, and somewhat eccentric (but in a good way). We love you Michael, and we miss you. You made the world a better place.

  8. Solution to their problems. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    why don't they have something like this:

    When they scan pages and some are not lined out, they should make a bigger scan area where everything is scanned out.
    then the scanned pages go to the computere where an auto eraser, erases all the lines that are out of the a-4 pages.
    then the auto eraser centers all the left over page filled with words and pictures, and paste them all behind each other.

    so then they can do complete books after each other without someone ever has to look back if it went right or wrong.

    people are stupid, I hate this place.

    - Anoymous Coward.