"Dirty and quick tips" content

Hi, I found an item from this site in the library and now I found some more interesting items. I would like to know if anyone have got permission to share them at LingQ, so I can share some more items.
Thanks

I have asked “Grammar Girls” for permission to use at lingQ, but she didn’t want to provide her works anywhere else. So do not import anything from “Grammar Girls.” I don’t know about other “Quick and Dirty Tips,” so you should wait for the reply from the person who import their contents. If we can use them for study materials, that would be great! I found the “Quick and Dirty Tips” episodes are very interesting too.

I suspect we are not allowed to use this material. Where did you find this item Ana?

I actually met Mignon, the Grammar Girl, at a podcast show. She seemed keen but then when I emailed the people in charge of the business end of the show they don’t seem too keen. They can’t be shared and I’m sure the Quick and Dirty tips are the same. Although, it can’t hurt for Ana to ask again. Maybe if they start to hear it from enough people they might reconsider.

You know, I found it shared at the LingQ library. Yesterday I browsed the library to see if I could find some new stuff, and I for my surprise found there a number of items that I suspect shouldn’t be shared… in the new additions area there is material from CNN, CBN and BBC right now…

Thanks Ana,

People sometimes share content that they should not. Please let us know when you see examples of this. I would appreciate if you would let me in which category this content is located. This makes it easier for us to find and reject it.

You are welcome, Steve.
I don’t know the categories, but they appear in the first page of the library.

They have been rejected. Thanks.

I wonder if the LingQ system admins should have a log of all the content uploaded and shared. They can simply screen through the list on a daily basis. Of course, the LingQ members should be responsible at their own end.

Edwin,

Unfortunately we live in the real world of what we have, not what we should have. We cannot drop everything to fix all of our little problems as our site evolves, as I have pointed out more than a few times.

In the long run we do not want to have to approve every new content item in all languages in our Library and hope to enable some kind of community editing based system for maintaining the quality of our content. But that is also something that has to be built.

In the meanwhile we are grateful when people report copyrighted items in the Library, and also grateful if people refrain from putting them there. So far it has not been a large problem.

Steve,

The logging mechanism is not a feature request to benefit the members, but LingQ itself.

If LingQ is evolving, it will grow and at some point in the future it will have hundreds of new articles uploaded and shared everyday. And if you are making big bucks, original owners of the content will come and get you. Sooner or later, you will need someone to screen the content somehow, either your staff, or the members. You either need to screen the content yourself or, as you mentioned, implement a reporting feature for the members.

I don’t think the logging feature is hard to implement. It is actually much easier to implement than the reporting feature. You can just query the database for all the content being put in shared mode in a certain day, and print out all the associated information. Then have your staff to screen through the list on a daily basis. Now, this won’t guarantee to catch all the illegal sharing, but at least you show you have done something on your side if someone were to sue you.

I appreciate your comments. However, please consider the following

  1. We do not have programming time to do this now, however easy it is to do.
  2. We do no have “staff” to review the list of new content, neither for copyright infringement, nor for quality.
  3. We have had only a handful of such occurrences,and on each occasion we just go through that language library concerned and cull any problem items.
  4. We intend to enable a select group of members/tutors to access our Library and edit items or cull them. This special access system will have to be built and is on our to do list. At that time we will have some kind of notification system for new content that will go to the members of the relevant editing committee.

So yes you are right, sooner or later we need a better way to control this. Given our present list of priorities, it will be later rather than sooner.

I appreciate your loyal support for LingQ, and I did not mean to appear negative in my reaction to your comment, which, according to Mark, I seemed to be. We are still counting on you for Cantonese content when we get there! and I appreciated your positive comments on your blog about how LingQ had helped your French.

Steve,
No problem. Your comment did not seem to be appear negative to me. Thanks.