Roosevelt Campaign - Why Make Pages Appear to Be Worked On?

Question

Does anyone know why, in many parts of the Theodore Roosevelt campaign, someone has put 1-3 words on each page to make it indicate that it's "In Progress"? When I first started working on this campaign a few months ago, I thought staff had done it for some reason. After a couple of months, though, I no longer thought that.

Someone, or several people, went through hundreds of pages typing 1-3 words from that page, often with spelling errors, and then saving each page. Why?

Abigail Shelton · Answer

Hi Henry, Unlike the Dickinson example, in this case (excepting the situation mentioned by Diane), these particular pages are being left in the "in progress" queue which is what should happen when a transcription is incomplete. I know seeing lot of pages "in progress" can be frustrating but it doesn't harm the overall transcription workflow. For example, we don't have to reopen these pages and transcribers can update "in progress" content directly in the transcription box without having to use the "edit" function, like they would if these were in the review queue. We want to keep the door open for people to feel like they can save and move on from a transcription that is incomplete or is too challenging for them, and don't want to encourage volunteers to submit incomplete text by suggesting they don't use the "in progress" features. I do hear your concerns so let's keep the conversation going if you have follow-up thoughts or questions. Abby By the People Community Manager

Abigail Shelton · Answer

Hi Diane and Laurie,

Diane-thanks for following up! The situation you describe is a little more concerning since pages containing incomplete transcriptions shouldn't have been submitted for review in the first place. Please do let us know if you come across a series of incomplete text in the review queue.

In terms of the "in progress" pages w/1-2 words entered, I looked at the backend of our database and I didn't see any malicious activity (ie. full transcriptions being deleted). It's definitely not staff activity but it's hard to say for certain why this might be happening in this campaign. It looks like the initial transcriptions were done over a short period of time so perhaps there were some folks trying to increase their statistics for some reason, as Catherine suggested.

I know it might be frustrating to see this sort of thing and so we especially appreciate your work to make sure the transcriptions are complete.

Abby

By the People Community Manager