transcribing etiquette

I'm having an etiquette moment. It feels like folks should it "submit" after transcribing, but I've encountered 100s and 100s in the TR collections where they're fully transcribed but only saved. Is this a norm that I'm misunderstanding?

Hi Lauren,

By TR I assume you mean Teddy Roosevelt.  Can you give a link or two to examples? 

Judith

Yes, sorry, Teddy Roosevelt.

Here's some (the header isn't completely transcribed, but you get the picture) and I'l ltry to remember not to finish them/click submit! They're transcribed, but only saved, not "submitted":

https://crowd.loc.gov/campaigns/rough-rider-bull-moose-theodore-roosevelt/3-sept-16-1901-dec-1902-first-year-as-presiden…

https://crowd.loc.gov/campaigns/rough-rider-bull-moose-theodore-roosevelt/3-sept-16-1901-dec-1902-first-year-as-presiden…

https://crowd.loc.gov/campaigns/rough-rider-bull-moose-theodore-roosevelt/3-sept-16-1901-dec-1902-first-year-as-presiden…

My understanding has been that even after we submit a page, it gets reviewed again by another person, as a safeguard. So someone probably did submit the pages you're looking at, rather than just save them as in progress. But they have to be submitted without any corrections once or twice (I'm not sure exactly how many eyes have to review the completed page) before it's no longer actually "In Progress."

Sometimes we are just making sure there are no more errors to correct on a fully transcribed page, and adding our approval.

Hi all, wanted to weigh in quickly here! Lauren, your instinct is correct. If you've completed transcribed a page, then you should "submit" the transcription for review. That way it goes in the "Needs Review" queue to be approved by another volunteer. You should use "save" if you are working on a transcription and cannot complete it for some reason but would like to make sure that the edits you've made remain in the transcription box. "Saved" transcriptions enter the "In Progress" queue and can then be completed by another volunteer. If you are noticing a lot of "saved" transcriptions that look complete to you, feel free to hit "submit" and they'll enter the "Needs Review" queue.

And Samantha, thanks for chiming in about the review process! Transcriptions that are submitted need to be reviewed and accepted by at least one other person before they are considered completed.

Hope that helps clarify!

Oh! I see, those are actually sitting in the "In Progress" folder. Sorry, I have actually never seen anyone do that on the campaign I'm working on, so I was confused by the question. My mistake. Thank you for explaining, Abigail, and sorry to add to the confusion, Lauren!

Thanks Abigail.  You comments are very helpful and in general especially helpful to those who have done transcription under different rules before joining HistoryHub.  (I used to "own" a body of work.  My first attempt at HistoryHub was omg, this is a brutal free-for-all!!)  (If not already in a guide for newbies, I hope HistoryHub will add your description of the process - especially targeted to those who have done transcription for previous organizations.)

The previous comments to my original post helped understand why it might seem brutal and your summary of the process is a capstone on how it is supposed to work.  I'm deeply appreciative to you and others who chimed in and look forward to joining the fray.

Pete

Thanks, Abigail!

There are hundreds of these in each series in the Teddy Roosevelt campaign, so I was starting to think I was doing it wrong. It's a bit frustrating when my only task as a transcriber not ready to review is to go in and make sure everything is typed and then click "submit." It also leaves a series looking like there are hundreds of "in progress" pages when really the campaign is almost or completely done!

I appreciate the confirmation of the ettiquite- I'll keep going in and cleaning up.

lb

Hi Lauren-I hear your frustration! But thank you for raising the issue and letting us know about it. We're brainstorming some ways to get the word out to folks about the difference between "Save" and "Submit." Look for a forthcoming History Hub thread on the topic!

Hi Lauren-I hear your frustration! But thank you for raising the issue and letting us know about it. We're brainstorming some ways to get the word out to folks about the difference between "Save" and "Submit." Look for a forthcoming History Hub thread on the topic!

I have come across a different problem. People approving pages that are incomplete as in the pages were never fully transcribed. Also, pages accepted as completed where there are a tremendous number of [?] and errors. If you cannot decipher a page, leave it for someone else. And do not accept pages without reviewing them. It does no good for LOC to publish pages only to find out they are embarrassingly poorly done.

The important thing is to have fun and not to feel pressured to complete anything but just help move the process along to the best of your ability. I recently finished a section that I had been through before. As I went through it, I realized that people were accepting my pages without reviewing them. Typos I made and [?] I left were never edited. That is not helpful and puts more pressure on us to be perfect the first time. None of us should feel pressured. We are a team and should add something to every page we work on. Of course, that can include accepting a page where you feel it is well done and complete.

Sorry for the ramble but I have been doing this a while and felt my comments might be helpful to you and LOC.

Have a good weekend all.

Henry

This final acceptance of blatantly incomplete work with [???]'s in it or made-up words seems to be fairly common in the TR papers, and it's obviously problematic.

Just recently I've taken to doing a first quick pass of an entire section of the documents and moving all the obviously incomplete documents from "Ready For Review" back into "In Progress" when I see them. Then they won't get approved by someone not really looking carefully at them -- and any reviewer can still grab them to complete them. Then I go back to the start and work slowly through them all, carefully editing each one.  If the problematic entries haven't been cleaned up by the time I get to them, I work to get them cleaned up.

It's slightly inefficient for my time to do this, but I think it's better for the body of work in the long run. Less reopening, fewer errors, etc. And in truth a "fast review" just looking for incompleteness can be done really quickly, as it's essentially a binary question -- No/Maybe -- where all the Maybes stay untouched in the Review folder.

I think you are doing tremendous work Diane and I fully agree with what you are saying. I have only edited pages like that as I have come across them but your approach, although more labor intensive, will assure that those documents have a better chance of being well done before being accepted. Lauren Algee Abigail Shelton I think it is time to reemphasize to reviewers that one [?] in a page is okay to accept but if there are many and the person reviewing cannot improve the page they should pass it by and leave it to someone else. Unless and until we have a system where we can reopen completed pages ourselves, it is a waste of LOC staff to have to reopen pages constantly for us, so we should make sure a page is as good as it can be before accepting it. Just my humble opinion.

Henry

This is a really smart strategy, Diane. Thanks for sharing it!

As Henry notes below, there will always be some pages that can't be fully deciphered, and as a human-powered project, we try not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. But we absolutely encourage you to keep taking a closer look at completed pages when it seems appropriate and to send us those you would like reopened.

The By the People team has been talking through the benefits and challenges of adding functionality to allow volunteers to reopen pages in still active campaigns on their own.  Right now it's not technically possible for a few reasons, but we do hope that feature can be added down the road!

Lauren