Yeah it takes more time that I think it will every time I do it.
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North, Thank you for reminding me that you guys donāt really have high expectations. I think I was getting the mentality that I had to edit anything I found that was broken, and it was becoming overwhelming. I just need to focus on my learning goals and stop feeling responsible for the sight. 
Thanks!
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Well, Thanks for all your help! I do think I was just totally looking at it wrong, and casual is the way to go! Thanks again.
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Wow. I never do anything like that.
YouTube videos generally have correct timestamps (and if the video isnāt under Creative Commons or you havenāt gotten permission from the author, then thereās not much you can do about that, as you have to share it as an āexternal linkā anyways). For me, if āgenerate timestampsā doesnāt work for a podcast (the first few sentences often need manually editing because of the introduction), then I consider it unfortunate and move on. For beginner, clear content, āgenerate timestampsā generally works though and thatās generally where Sentence Mode is most useful. As Iām progressing in Italian, I notice I use Sentence Mode less and less, because itās just not worth 100 swipes per lesson to only need to translate 5 sentences. You also canāt do extensive reading while listening in Sentence mode, because you have to swipe so much.
I also donāt bother doing much editing of the transcript for intermediate and above content too. Itās just not necessary, if it is mostly accurate. At a beginner level, itās much more important that the transcript and the audio line up though.
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Oh wow, well congratulations on the new lolo_101 bamboozled monthly award. When I wrote the message I just checked the languages that Iām currently studying because otherwise Iād have to delete Chinese etc. you know the deal.
For what is worth I take great pleasure on reading your long posts, they are always very articulate and relevant. I hope I can convince you that, at least in that regard, they are not entirely pointless. I will also try to heed that piece of advice and refrain myself from committing the same blunder. But let me finish by saying that I also thinkā¦
Thanks for both of your replies. Have a nice day 
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I just have spent way too much time editing Noriko podcasts and other lessons, which I didnt even upload, so I have no idea if they are even legally shared, so my effort was double wasted. There will be no timestamps, and Iāll click generate. They will be a minute off, so I will do them individually. Timestamps are definitely more important for beginner level. Iāve just been doing it wrong.
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My experience is mainly with Chinese and Romanian, in both the alignment works literally perfectly. I donāt think it could be better. And I doubt that there is anything specific about Japanese that would make this process more difficult, I could be wrong though.
In case someone finds it interesting, North once let it slip that LingQ is using a software called aeneas for the alignment: aeneas: automagically synchronize audio and text
You can read about how it works here: aeneas/wiki/HOWITWORKS.md at master Ā· readbeyond/aeneas Ā· GitHub
Maybe someone should try to run this locally and compare the results.
Although, I just made a copy of Noriko S2 E1 imported audio and text and ran generate audio, it did take a hot minute, but the results seem reasonable to me. Maybe some changes came with yesterdayās update?
Also, I just searched and found most of Norikoās videos have subtitles. Maybe hellboy just needs to update his workflow, he already downloads the audio from YT (see yt-dl in the filename), so he probably should start uploading the subtitle files. LingQ accepts those and syncs them up with the audio. Iāve been using this for transcribed podcasts and it works just fine, although there seems to be a one hour limit.
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Yes, I am with you. Unfortunately I decided to upload beginner materialā¦ 
And no, somehow I rarely get a proper sentence with the āgenerated timestampsā. Maybe itās the specific languageā¦
I got the permission to upload about 100 really nice short videos for a language where there is not much material yetā¦ so either I upload one perfect lesson a week - which takes about two years and 100 hours of work - or four lessons a week with a proper text editing but without any timestampā¦ Actually I was wondering about that over New Years, when I counted the time spent last month uploading and editing lessonsā¦ and while I am writing this post, I decided to leave the timestamps away in the future.
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I think itās because there is often an English intro that has no text to correlate to that part in the lesson, also Kanji is pronounced drastically differently depending on the context, so I think software might be confused if it actually analyses the sounds. ??? I donāt know anything about the tech side. Sometimes it works, mostly it doesnāt for me. Maybe itās better these days, but a year ago I helped put the timestamps on the main mini-stories for Lingq because it didnāt work with Japanese for some reason.
I havenāt tried today. I didnāt know theyāre was an update. For what its worth, it has sometimes worked for me, which is better than it was when I started. Also, maybe I am doing something wrong. I donāt think it is Hellboys fault. 8/10 YouTube videos Iāve tried to import for myself didnāt work correctly. The audio didnāt come with, so I had to go run it through a YouTube to mp3 converter online, download it to my computer, and then re-uploaded it. I donāt know if that makes sense, Iām probably just doing things wrong, but it seems like it takes longer than I think it will most of the time.
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Hi, HeatherJean.
Iām one of the LingQ content managers.
My first advice would be taking some time off.
Second, this is meant to be fun, since itās a voluntarily activity.
If it brings you down, shift your focus to something else.
After all, editing is not the most exciting job in the world in my mind.
Bottom line, you can always reach out to me, if you need any assistance or struggle to find a way to contribute.
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Yeah. I definitely just needed to look at it differently. Thank you so much! After everyoneās comments, I donāt feel this way anymore. Should I delete the post?
Thank you!
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As someone who has been listening to a lot of those lessons, I appreciate your taking the time to edit them. I study a lesson best in sentence mode, and Iāve been a little disheartened lately about how thatās basically impossible with her stuff. Iām doing some of them as I can, too, but there are a LOT.
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You are right Fer.weh, this software works decently enough for European languages, but not Jp
, for example.
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As always, great point, Florian. Hopefully, weāll be able to put some of them to practice.
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Hi,
as many librarians say that the copyright issue is a big (may be the biggest) problem. I donāt think I can create contents even by importing youtube videos without much hesitation.
Putting the names of youtube or podcasts on the Spreadsheet of the LingQ can be done, but preferences are so different from each user.
When I would be asked what is good resource (in my case, Japanese as my mother tongue) not officially, but āprivatelyā, I could answer that. This may be a little time-consuming, but I could do as voluntarily.
There are lots of materials available on the website (audio with (or without) transcript) for not only for language learning, but also learning something interesting through language learning, for which more advanced level might be necessary. There is no reason for not taking advantage of it.
Thank you for LingQ
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I think this thread is very helpful.
Other librarians, or people considering whether to become a librarian, will want to hear what others are thinking. Certainly there have been moments when I felt similarly to your initial post.
I have had to keep reminding myself that Iām not getting paid for this. And I asked myself, does this task help MY language progression? If not, then I would decide to spend my time on something else.
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Hi HeatherJean,
I found this thread informative and enlightening about the librarianās role.
Many users genuinely appreciate the lessons you created in such a format. On a side note, how many correctly timestamped lessons with English translation are needed for a user to achieve their goal(e.g., follow along with the text at the speed of audio) or acquire a specific skill(e.g., derive word meaning from the context) in the language? Any language with 50-100 hours of content in this format is more than sufficient IMO.
Considering the law of diminishing returns, it would not be advisable for learners to lean on such a crutch in the long run. On the other hand, it would be a godsend if the recording and replay buttons could be developed and implemented by the Lingq team along with the correctly timestamped sentences.
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- I feel LingQ is as cheap as it is because most of the material is input by users. While it may seem unfair āuseā of the people who add the material, I think LingQ would have to be much, much more expensive if the LingQ staff had to add all this material. Or it would be the same price but have a fraction of the material it has.
Just be aware that as a user or librarian, you need to be aware that this is not a paid job. You do help LingQ financially by adding material but you do also help other people who are learning languages here. Just weigh your options and how you want to use your time.
- The points system for contributors is way off. People who contribute LingQ courses like the 60 mini-stories, Eating out, Who is she etc do not get any points, the weight of adding translations that get used is way too high and the weight of adding quality material is way too low. It is hard to quantify the points for lessons read but if I remember correctly you just get points for lessons opened, regardless of their length, which does not make sense.
A more realistic system would be that lessons read give more points proportionately and that when a translation is used, both the user who added the translation AND the user who added the lesson where the translation is used get a point. I for example, provided more than 90% of what is in the Icelandic library but I think Iām at #3 in the all time contributors, because others provided more translations.
Having said all of that, Iām not sure I care about the points for contributing. I know what I have contributed and I know it helps people, hopefully more people down the road. If I get vain about stats and wanting to score high, it tends to be towards my known words and learning stats, but not the contribution stats.
- I agree about the potential problems of copyright violations. I think LingQ should implement input slots about copyright when you import lessons. Some textsbox and checkboxes/radio buttons about whether it is in the public domain, whether you are the author yourself or when and how you got permission from whom to publish, if neither of the first two is true.
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You can do a external lesson rather than a shared lesson. It will then just link the user to the actual YouTube video. I think this is the best policy for most things. :). I would love to know what channels, content you would recommend as a Japanese speaker.
It is true that peopleās preferences are very individual. :).
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Good point. They really only need the timestamps for beginner lessons. I think Iām going to shift away from timestamps and just share external links as it feels less like copyright infringement. :).
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