2 steve.
I have do it!
I meant - I have done it.
Really? I want to learn proper spelling of English and the other languages I’m learning. I’m not here to learn historical spelling, sorry.
Especially the writing abilities give often the first impression of a foreign person. Is she or he educated or not.
If people applying for a job in companies they often were sorted out if they were not able to write properly. I know that this is a fact. Companies often get hundred of writings applying for ONE job.
@mikebond: I corrected the spelling, not complete sentences, grammar forms or something like this. Simply the spelling. For example “dass” instead of “daß”, “Foto” instead of “Photo”, “müssen” instead of “muessen”, “Stalllampe” instead of “Stallampe”.
Vera, if one wants to learn contemporary spelling, one should read contemporary texts.
I think most students can figure that they must not use the forms and vocabulary they read in 19th-century novels when they write a cv to apply for a job.
I wonder if it’s fair and legal to modify the original forms, unless you specify “edited by…” I just think literary works should be respected and not modernized. Modernization in editing or in translating novels is not considered favourably any longer, at least by many linguists and theoricians of translation.
I would never like to read the German classics as if they had been written in 2010.
This is just my thought, based on my translation studies, not only on my tastes.
Anyway, you are free to continue updating the orthograph if you like doing it and if there are people who like reading modernized classics.
@Vera:
You corrected “dass” instead of “daß”, “Foto” instead of “Photo”, “müssen” instead of “muessen”, “Stalllampe” instead of “Stallampe”.
I personally still write the old way (with one exception: “muessen”) and I will do so also in the future. Only as a tutor I try to use “Neue Deutsche Rechtschreibung”.
But I think it is very important that a learner encounters and knows both forms because he will see both for sure!
In German schools they use the version with the corrected spelling! And even if you have bought a book of Goethe or Schiller 30 years ago it would have a modernized spelling that differs from the original form. I don’t speak from form and style! That is something I wouldn’t dare to change too!
The problem is that you’ll not find the corrected versions for free on the internet. Gutenberg, Librivox etc. provide only the forms from 70 years ago because of the copyright laws.
By the way, we should stay with the topic of this thread and open a new thread if we want to discuss if spelling should be corrected or not. It is always a pity if an important topic get lost by discussing other things (maybe important things too, but than a new thread is better).
Thanks for the explanations, Vera. We can debate this in another thread, but we can also end the discussion here and go back to the original topic.
"We should stay with the topic of this thread and open a new thread if we want to discuss if spelling should be corrected or not. "
I agree with VeraI on that.
In fact, in many French lessons you will also find two spellings (old - before 2004 - and new - after 2004):
vingt et un / vingt-et-un
le porte-monnaie / le portemonnaie
les après-midi / les après-midis
le bluejean / les bluejeans
le revolver / le révolver
j’accélérerai / j’accélèrerai
l’événement / l’évènement
s’il vous plaît / s’il vous plait
l’île / l’ile
etc.
Wow! There are so many posts that I will try not to forget anything!
Thank you very much Suzane and Alex for your first two messages. I read them before going to bed and they made me feel really better.
I completely agree with Vera about the value points you have suggested. I don’t know it the points should go like this, but at least, a part from giving more points to original content, it is true that the amount of work to create a less than a minute beginners lesson or a 9 minutes transcription of a podcast it’s definitely not the same. So to have this in mind and assign different value points would be a nice solutions to the award points problem.
@mikebond: I didn’t mean to make you or any other person who has uploaded content from Librivox feel guilty. As Vera said, the problem is not to upload some lessons from this sources (which I must admit I have studied some of them in English), but do this in a such massive way that collapse or buries the rest of the interesting content. 5000 lessons in two months is not a reasonable amount. With this upward trend, in a few months you will just find this kind of content in the library. I think it’s basically a matter of being reasonable. You can upload some lessons like this, but not 290 lessons in a day just for Spanish or 5000 lessons in two months.
Anyway, in my opinion, when you upload this kind of free content, it should only be in your native language or a language in which you are really and advanced user so to be able to assess the quality of the content. What I think it’s really unacceptable is to upload content read by foreign speakers with a really bad accent and pronunciation.
one word … Jealousy!
@mikola: Thank you for commenting here Nikolay. First of all, I have nothing personal against you. I’m not studying Russian, but I think it’s really interesting that you’re uploading your own content to the library.
Also, as I said before, I think that it’s ok to upload some lessons from Librivox and this kind of providers, but there should be in a reasonable number, otherwise, this kind of free stuff that you can find everywhere will bury the rest of the content. As I have also said, what I think it’s unacceptable is to upload content spoken by non native speakers, so you should be more selective and just upload what you can assess as good enought. If you don’t have the required level for that specific language (I mean, any language in general) so that to value the quality of the content, then it’s better not to upload this content. I think quality should prevail over quantity.
I also value people over everything and I really appreciate the effort that many people is doing for the community.
So far, I have created 194 lessons for the Spanish library from Beginner to Advanced level, and I have token me a lot of time, effort and thinking for new ideas to create those lessons. You must undersand me when I said that I felt really frustrated when I saw yesterday that you created 290 lessons for the Spanish library in a day. Also I wanted to check out what my friends where doing in Spanish, as I usually do, and the Friends tab was collapsed by you sharing lessons. 5 pages like this! So I got really disappointed with all that.
@paynexr2 ???
@PAYNEXR2
What are you jealous of? I hope that you try to use a complete sentence in order not to be misunderstood by other people.
Let’s use up all the points before they expire. This must be the ultimate solution to this issue. 
No, it is not the ultimate solution.
@tora-san
I suppose, PAYNEXR2 is jealous of alsuvi’s level of English…
I try always to use my points - it’s very easy to spend them, but hard to earn them.
@ Vera and others regarding the differential points awards, that is a big project you are suggesting and probably not an area for us to focus on now. However, we hope that over the coming month or so we will make improvements in the library that will make points distribution more fair. Please be patient a little longer and see how our new improvements affect things.
I believe in the value of creative disorder, where we do not know what will lead to what. The important thing is for people to have an opportunity to express their creativity and to express their views. This only works in atmosphere of respect. That does not mean that we cannot express our views, as Albert, Vera, Mikola and others have done. It just means that we keep should try to keep our comments focused on the subject and not on denigrating people.
I also do not mind occasionally meandering into tangents that take us away from the main subject, like this spelling issue, where I respectfully disagree with Vera.