@Mark: again, you’re only seeing from the perspective of the submitter.
The problem is that it takes a not insignificant amount of time to fulfil a request. The responder doesn’t know if anybody is already working on it. It’s all very well for the submitter to mark the request as fulfilled, but there could still be people working on it. The effort they have put in is not given any recognition at all, and the slower people could well be doing a better job. That’s not the submitter’s fault, because they don’t know.
Currently:
the submitter makes the requst
responders ‘tender’ responses to the submitter
responses are judged by the submitter
if they are satisfied the request is fulfilled
The major omission is the satisfcation of the responder.
You cannot apply your ‘free market’ analogy. If responders said that they could fulfil the request for x amount of points, and then the submitter chose one of those, then we’d have a free market. In the current situation, responders are required to complete all the requested work in order to be considered by the submitter. During the time they are working other people can begin working, respond, and have their work accepted. This leaves some responders feeling ‘why am I bothering to respond?’ as the chances of receiving recognition for their work is not high enough.
People don’t respond just for the points; they do it to help and be part of the community as well. As a result, a rejection can feel very personal. Spending 30 mins-hour on a piece of work and finding out it was a waste of time very much feels like a rejection. Responders shouldn’t be working against each other.
So, the exchange should be less about market forces, and more about the community. For this reason, there needs to be some way of making responders aware of what others are doing.
I have to congratulate Paule for completing that request. I saw it quickly when it was first posted and had a good laugh. Did you ever work out what this was about?
‘The belated birthday card’
‘The calm news reporter’
‘The disastrous rescue attempt’
‘The gleaming and glistening’
etc. etc.
I have no idea how you managed to do the translations, but well done. What did this person want the translations for?
As for the Kohle, it sucks to do that work and not get the expected amount. Still, 2200 points is 22 dollars, and to get that for 2 hours work for something that isn’t even a real job would be pretty sweet. The 700 that you got for your work was probably not worth it, but the 2200 would have been a seriously good amount of money.
As for the system, I cannot see how it can really be improved so long as multiple people are able to respond to the same posts. Either the points get divided out among the people who respond, or the person who posts pays much more. Neither is really a good option. In the case that Paule mentioned, only two people responded, so unless the rule was that only one person could respond, it would not have helped. In the few posts I have posted publically here, I have always recieved a few responses. It has always been difficult since I always felt it was unfair to give people only a fraction of the points I suggested, but did not want to just ignore the contributions of several of the people. On the other hand, I didn’t want to spend five times the number of points suggested because, to be honest, the corrections were never worth that. This is one reason I prefer Lang-8.
@Colin “The 700 that you got for your work was probably not worth it, but the 2200 would have been a seriously good amount of money.”
I received 800 points as a gift, so it added up to 1500 points, which is pretty good. The problem was, that she paid 8 dollars more than she expected and me and the user who made the other response received 7 dollars less. So yeah, that´s suboptimal* for everyone involved.
"“Still, 2200 points is 22 dollars, and to get that for 2 hours work for something that isn’t even a real job would be pretty sweet.”
It felt like “real work” though and most people couldn´t do that in only 2 hours (my 18 year old self would´ve needed 4 hours or more ). Well, a professional translator could do it quicker and better. Then again, the lowest price I´ve found on google is 10cents per word. So I guess you´d have to pay at least 100 dollars for the request I did.
So yeah…I think the pricing on LingQ is fine, as long as the submitter doesn´t have to pay more and the translator gets the full pay.
It is hard to see any reasonable suggestion, in this thread, as to what would be a good idea to actually change about the system.
The suggestion to limit the number of “seats in the car” - wouldn’t have worked here unless only one seat was available, and even then that would cause all sorts of new problems. For example, whoever reserves the job first may not do a satisfactory job, but would still be miffed if not receiving any points. Words would be exchanged. Time and energy would also be wasted starting the process again, with no guarantee of result.
A market based approach would be to be bid the work, and for bidders to be rated (or have some rating/reference system, or sample of previous work). If two or three people bid, the person can choose on cost, time and rating/references. Everyone would be reasonably clear of expectations before any work started.
I did not have the time to read this whole thread tonight, but I want to mention one thing (I’m the “second person”): I never intended to cheat nor to push in front by some means or others. When I started to work at the translation there was no other comment relating to the request.
My only mistake was that I thought, clicking the “Save” button meant to submit the achieved progress and make it visible for the other users, what I therefore did repeatedly. I was already halfway through the translation until I noticed the second button which revealed the discussion, that was already underway. That was when I stopped my work until the situation was resolved. After the submitter decided to increase the amount of points, I finished my work and I did this as conscientiously as I’m able to do.
I agree that the system may not be optimal but I don’t want to be suspected to exploit either system or faith of any learner I’m trying to help.
The problem with the new exchange system which was implemented almost a year ago has been taken up time and time again on LingQ. I was super impressed when it first came out last June, though as you can see from the links provided below, various problems were soon pointed out already last year.
Here is a mere handful from last year, where some threads extend to five pages.
You are not adverse to updates and have already implemented changes. A major problem with ‘awareness’ could easily be solved by LingQ by adding text such as:
“Please note that as the exchange is open and available to all members who would like to respond, when submitting your response you may not be allocated the full amount of points available.”
Would you be willing to increase awareness in whatever way you find desirable such that new and old users are better informed?
“I did not have the time to read this whole thread tonight”
“I don’t want to be suspected to exploit either system or faith of any learner I’m trying to help.”
Read the whole thread and you´ll see that no one suspects you of being a cheater or anything like that.
“My only mistake was that I thought, clicking the “Save” button meant to submit the achieved progress and make it visible for the other users”
It´s good that you bring this up. That happened to several users (including me) and a few weeks, if not months ago, we had a discussion about it.
@Maria
That “warning message” sounds like a great idea
It´d be cool to add a “Announce in the comment section that you started working on it”-message and a “You have to click on ‘save’ AND ‘submit’ to submit your response”-message as well.
“Read the whole thread and you´ll see that no one suspects you of being a cheater or anything like that.”
Hm, I probably misunderstood some things like:
“It doesn’t suck for the person who wrote a half-finished translation and received more than two points a word for it, compared to your just-over-half-per-word for doing the entire thing.”
“Posting half-finished corrections/translations is cheating the system anyway”
“…you’re effectively ‘stealing’ points from the people who take longer because they’re actually completing the task at hand.”
I only thought it should be justifiable to clarify that, although the basic cause of this discussion was a situation I was involved in, none of the things mentioned above has anything to do with what I did or intended to do.
When I wrote that, all I knew was that you’d posted a half-finished translation. I didn’t realize that the REASON you’d only done half was because you found out that Paul was also doing translations.
I maintain that opinion towards people who just submit half-finished translations out of laziness… but don’t worry, I retract those statements towards you
And I almost immediately answered “That person read my “I´m working on it!”-comment when her own translation was already 50% finished and decided to stop.”
@lynkusu: I’m sure you did not intend to offend me personally.
But all in all I always find it a better solution to talk WITH the involved people than to talk ABOUT them. That’s what I missed in this thread and the only reason why I found it important to say something. If three people are involved it could usually be helpful to talk with all three of them, otherwise misunderstandings may happen easily.
