How to improve the library

I want to spend some time and effort in improving the library. I would like to have some help, in each of our languages. Some of my suggestions are:

  1. I would like to revive the idea of an editorial group in each language.
  2. The Editorial group should make sure we have good Playlists for every level of difficulty, or at least for Beginner and Intermediate levels. This means creating these Playlists, recognizing the good ones we have, or encouraging others to make them.
  3. We should promote the outstanding Playlists, talk about them and make sure people use them. Hopefully people will “like” them with Roses.
  4. Culling bad lessons, lessons with poor sound, lots of mistakes, incorrect levels etc… is a much more difficult job. Where possible we should do so, however, if we can create good Playlists that will get us started.

In addition each editorial group can be on top of issues in each of the languages, aspects of each library that can be improved, and let me know.

I would hope that with a concerted effort over three months we can improve the library. I await your comments and suggestions.

would there be an Editorial group for the beta languages too?

Zahra, sure. Are you volunteering?

I was thinking of having a few google+ Hangouts to discuss the library and editorial groups. Who is interested?

Hi Steve!
“How to improve the library”

I am very active on this issue!
Alex know it!(I think)
I report him often per email.

To contact the provider is not easy! there are often not longer active on LingQ.
So I need time to report and nothing happen.
And that is very disappointing.
For example: new provider often put only one lesson in a course.
They make for each lesson a new course. We need someone who put them in the same course.

j:-)

After the practice of the 70-year state meddling in all creative activity durring the Soviet time I am against any ‘editorial groups’ that is another word for the ‘censorship’.
THe user can decide himself if he\she likes this\that lesson or text and use it or deny of usage.
Besides, such ‘editorial groups’ discourage a lot of providers to share their lessons.

evgueny40,

I think censorship is not exactly what Steve is actually going for here but rather making collections more transparent, especially for beginner users.

@steve, I would be happy to help with Arabic, but as I am not fluent in the language it I don’t know if I can help with deciding which playlists are good etc
I agree we need to improve the library, as far as I am concerned I think the lessons could be sorted better into different levels
We definitely need volunteers to help with this to make it easier for users. But for the beta languages, maybe what we need first is more lessons in the library. I am currently searching for good quality material to upload and hope to be contributing to the Arabic library soon

IMHO there is no need for “editorial groups”, if lessons, courses and playlists are rated (up and down!) by the users. If there are sound or other problems, users should contact the provider. As I already try to supply the best lesson and audio quality, an “editorial group” would discourage me. I would never know what changes this group is doing on my lessons.

  1. Maybe “mentor group” works better than “editorial group.”
  2. Can we agree on what an outstanding Playlist or good Playlist is? I think Miss_Take’s Spanish lessons from Radiolistas are outstanding, but a couple other members disagree in whole or in part. Maybe they are right and I am wrong.
  3. I am not trying to play devil’s advocate here. I do think LingQ needs a Quality Control Office, because I found some lessons unacceptable merely because the audio does not match the written text.
    Just some thoughts.

@donhamiltontx

If the audio does not match the written text, you should contact the provider to fix this, or to remove the lesson from the library.

I did not suggest censorship. However, I would like to hear about lessons that are in the wrong difficulty level, or have sound problems etc.

I also think that creating more playlists , especially at the beginner level, would help.

I agree that users can vote for their favourite lessons.

I would not give any particular group more power than any other users in terms of giving roses. However, we can make a deliberate effort to “like” some playlists to give them prominence. Thereafter the users judgment will take over.

I did not mean that the editorial group would control content, but rather would have some responsibility for identifying problems and improving libraries in different languages.

Let me know if you are interested in participating in a Hangout on this subject.